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MACAULAY'S 

PEECHES ON COPYRIGHT 

LINCOLN'S 

COOPER INSTITUTE ^DRES 



LONGMANS' ENGLISH CLASSICS 



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COPYRIGHT DKPOSrr. 



LONGMANS' ENGLISH CLASSICS 

EDITED BY 

ASHLEY H. THORNDIKE, Ph.D., L.H.D. 

PBOFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 



MACAULAY'S 
SPEECHES ON COPYRIGHT 



LINCOLN'S 
COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS 



.MACAULAY'S 

SPEECHES ON COPYRIGHT 

LINCOLN'S 
COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS 



EDITED 

WITH INTRODUCTIONS AND NOTES 
BY 

DUDLEY H. MILES, Ph.D. 

CHAIRMAN OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH IN THE EVANDER CHILDS 
HIGH SCHOOL, NEW YORK 




LONGMANS, GEEEN, AND CO. 

FOURTH AVENUE AND 30th STREET, NEW YORK 

PRAIRIE AVENUE AND 25th STREET, CHICAGO 

1915 



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3 , . 



Copyright, 1915 

BY 
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 



OCT -41915 
©CI.A4H771 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



PAGE 



Introduction to Macaulay's Speeches on Copyright: 

I. Life of Macaulay vii 

II. The Meaning and History of Copyright xii 

III. The Debates of 1841 and 1842 xv 

Bibliographical Note on Macaulay xxi 

Chronological Table xxiii 

Introduction to Lincoln's Cooper Institute Address: 

I. Life of Lincoln xxviii 

XL Lincohi and Slavery xxxiii 

III. The Cooper Institute Address xxxviii 

Bibliographical Note on Lincoln xliv 

Chronological Table xlvii 

Macaulay's First Speech on Copyright 1 

Macaulay's Second Speech on Copyright 23 

Lincoln's Cooper Institute Address 33 

Questions and Topics for Study: 

The Speeches on Copyright 61 

The Cooper Institute Address 69 

Notes 81 

V 



INTRODUCTION 

MACAULAY'S SPEECHES ON COPYRIGHT 

I. Life of Macaulay 

Thomas Babington Macaulay's prosperous life 
began on October 25, 1800, at Rothley Temple, Lei- 
cestershire, where his mother was paying a visit to 
her sister. His childhood was spent in the heart 
of London and in the pleasant suburb of Clapham. 
His father was so much engrossed in the anti- slavery 
agitation that he had little time to spend on the train- 
ing of his eldest son. His mother, how^ever, did not 
spoil the child. Though he crept unwillingly to 
school, she would hear none of his entreaties to remain 
home on rainy afternoons, saying stoically, " No, 
Tom, if it rains cats and dogs, you shall go." He 
learned without effort, but what he was really inter- 
ested in was writing long epics or an epitome of uni- 
versal history — childhood works which were as correct 
in spelling and grammar, as accurate in punctuation, 
and as clear in meaning as his mature masterpieces. 

At twelve he was sent to a small private school 
near the great university of Cambridge. He was 
very homesick, but occupied his whole time with 
books and the debating society. Of it he early wrote 
that the subject chosen for the next discussion was 
*' whether Lord Wellington or Marlborough was the 
greatest general. A w^arm debate is expected.'^ In 
these discussions little Macaulay seems to have at- 
tracted attention by the loudness and fervor of his 



viii INTRODUCTION 

tones, for his father wrote praying '' that the orna- 
ment of a meek and quiet spirit may be substituted 
for vehemence and self-confidence/' 

At Trinity College, Cambridge, which he entered 
at eighteen, he soon became one of the bright partic- 
ular lights in the famous debating society, the Cam- 
bridge Union. He shone equally in conversation in 
the rooms of fellow-students, where on all current 
questions he usually maintained the opposite view 
with boaniless illustration and argument. His bril- 
liancy gave ris3 to the story of a day spent at the coun- 
try house of ths Marquis of Lansdowne. There he 
and his friend Austin were entertained at a gathering 
of ladi33, artists and politicians. The two students 
cotnni3nced a conversation at breakfast which was 
kept up, with only slight interruption at lunch, until 
the bell rang for dinner, yet to Vv^hich every one in 
the house was a listener. At his father's home in 
Glapham, too, he mingled in the discussions of political 
subjects led by some of the most influential members 
of parliament who lived on the Surrey side of London. 
He thus early gained a thorough schooling in the dis- 
cussion of questions of public policy. Moreover, 
his student controversies gradually brought him to 
the conviction that the Whig party embraced within 
its principles all that was wise and just. Though he 
detested mathematics, he was on a third trial granted 
a fellowship in 1S24 and an A.M. in July of the next 
year. 

During his school life he took not the least interest 
in any athletic sports. He was no less indifferent to 
skating, shooting, riding, driving, than to swimming, 
rowing, or cricket. Indeed, his only exercise during 
his whole life was walking. Yet even on the most 
crowded streets of London he would thread his way 
at a rapid pace with a book in his hand, reading 



INTRODUCTION ix 

faster than any one else could sitting clown. The 
secret of his great attainments lay in an unerring 
memory and the ability to take in at a glance the 
contents of a printed page. As a child he memorized 
^' The Lay of the Last Minstrel '' at a single reading- 
while he and his father were making a call. On re- 
turning home he sat down on the bed and repeated as 
much of it to his mother as she would hear. In 
mature life he says of a trip to Ireland while he was 
writing his '^ History/' when one would suppose that 
his thoughts would have been absor]:)ed with the 
momentous events he was preparing to describe: 
'^ As I could not read, I used an excellent substitute 
for reading. I went through ' Paradise Lost ' in 
my head." He seems never to have spent an hour 
in meditation, but as we shall see in his speeches his 
vast memory at once supplied him with a whole arsenal 
of arguments and illustrations for any occasion. 

His father wished him to become a lawyer on leav- 
ing Cambridge, and he did study sufficiently to secure 
admission to the bar in 1826. But while in college 
he had contributed to '^ Knight's Monthly Magazine." 
Jeffrey, the famous editor of the '^ Edinburgh Review," 
the foremost magazine of the time and a Whig organ, 
invited him to contribute to his pages. Hardly had 
he left Cambridge when his '' Essay on Milton " 
appeared. He became famous in a day. His break- 
fast table was covered each morning with cards 
of invitation to dinner from every quarter of London. 
For the next twenty years he could not release himself 
from the demand for his writings in the ^^ Review." 
The publishers at a later date told him that five 
hundred book-sellers in different parts of the kingdom 
reported that the ^' Review " sold or did not sell 
according as there were or were not articles by Mr. 
Macaulay. 



X INTRODUCTION 

In 1S2<S he was on account of his writings made a 
commissioner of bankruptcy at a handsome salary. 
In 1S30, as a result of some articles on James Mill, 
he was asked b}^ Lord Lansdowne to enter parliament 
from the vacant borough of Calne. He had, to be 
sure, attracted attention even before leaving college 
by a speech at a meeting of the Anti-slavery Society. 
The " Edinburgh Review " pronounced it " a dis- 
play of eloquence so signal for rare and matured 
excellence that the most practiced orator may well 
admire how it should have come from one who then 
for the first time addressed a pul)lic assembly." In 
his maiden speech in parliament he spoke so clearly 
on the bill for the removal of political disabilities 
from the Jews that Sir James Mackintosh declared 
that he arose, not " to supply any defects in the speech 
of his honorable friend, but principally to absolve his 
own conscience." After Macaulay's speech on the 
reform bill in 1831 the Speaker sent for him and told 
him that in all his prolonged experience he had never 
seen the House in such a state of excitement. He was 
compared to Burke, Fox, and other great orators of 
the past. Of his speech on the second reading of the 
bill in 1832 Jeffrey said that it put him clearly at 
the head of the great speakers if not the debaters of 
the House. 

There is another side to his parliamentary career 
which is even more creditable. Shortly after he 
entered he voted for a bill which swept away his bank- 
ruptcy commissionership when he could ill afford to 
lose the income. Indeed, he had to sell the gold 
medals which he had won at Cambridge to keep out 
of debt. For he now had not only to support himself 
but to mend the broken fortunes of his family. To 
the electors of Leeds in 1832, from whom he was 
seeking a seat in parliament, he wrote: " I w^as per- 



INTRODUCTION xi 

fectly aware that the avowal of my feelings on the 
subject of pledges was not likely to advance my 
interest at Leeds. ... It is not necessary to my 
happiness that I should sit in Parliament; but it is 
necessary to my happiness that I should possess, in 
Parliament or out of Parliament, the consciousness of 
having done what was right.'' In 1833 he again 
lived up to his convictions by opposing a govern- 
ment measure on West India slavery, although doing 
so might have cost him his position in parliament 
and blasted his prospects for a public career. 

Fortunately, he retained both honor and position. 
As secretary of the Board of Control of the East India 
Company his speeches had a great deal to do with 
the adoption of the plan for reorganizing that company. 
His mastery of the subject led to his appointment as 
one of the members of the Supreme Council to govern 
India, at a salary of ten thousand pounds a year. 
Once in Calcutta he plunged into his official duties 
and also undertook the chairmanship of two com- 
mittees. Pie reorganized the educational system of 
India and had much to do with drawing up the Penal 
Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure. 

Returning to England after an absence of over 
four years with the fortune of himself and his family 
reestablished, he was in lvS39 elected to parliament 
from Edinburgh, and entered the cabinet as Secretary 
of War. But his parliamentary triumphs came in 
the debates on the copyright bills in 1841 and 1842, 
when, as Gladstone says, '^ he arrested the success- 
ful progress of legislative measures, and slew them 
at a moment's notice, and by his single arm." With 
the publication of the '^ Lays of Ancient Rome " in 
1842, he added great popularity as a poet to his fame 
as essayist and speaker. We need not linger over the 
remainder of his parliamentary career. He lost his 



xii INTRODUCTION 

seat in 1S47, but was returned in 1852 without a can- 
vass and remained for four years. 

After his return from India his ambition was to 
write the '' History of England " which is his surest 
title to fame. AVhen the first two volumes appeared 
in 1848 they created a greater stir than had been 
produced by any other historical book published in 
that century. He lived to complete live volumes, 
dealing with the fifteen years following the Revolu- 
tion of 1688. After an attack of heart-disease in 
1852 he contracted a confirmed asthma. The tv/o 
ailments kept him from working with any ease during 
the remainder of his life, but he nevertheless con- 
tinued to prepare the chapters with the same scrupu- 
lous care which had assured the popular success of 
the first volumes. While sitting *n his chair by the 
fireside he died December 28, 1859. He was buried 
January 9, 1860, in Poets' Corner in Westminster 
Abbey. 

II. The Meaning and History of Copyright 

If you will look on the page opposite the Table of 
Contents, you will find the following notice: " Copy- 
right, 1915, by Longmans, Green, and Company." 
What does that mean? Simply this, that the pub- 
lishers have the sole right to print and publish this 
book for twenty-eight years, and if at the expiration 
of that term they so wish, for an additional term of 
twent3^-eight years. Such is the provision of the 
United States law passed in 1909. 

What interest have you in such a right? You 
have the same interest that every buyer of books 
has, for the law helps to determine how much you shall 
pay for each copy. Of course the publishers go to 
considerable expense to place a book in your hands. 



INTRODUCTION xiii 

They have to pay for the paper and the printing and 
the binding, the advertising and the office and general 
expenses connected with offering the volume to the 
public,, and provide for the payment of the author. 
It is necessary, therefore, that the copyright owner, 
whether he be publisher or author, shall be secured 
for a certain time against unauthorized reproduction 
of a published book. The copyright laws provide 
such security. 

Exactly what copyright means is a little harder to 
explain. But it does seem clear that you have as 
much right to what flows from your own mind as to 
what you form with your hands. If you whittle out 
the hull of a boat or make a new model for an aero- 
plane, you surely have the right to keep it. If you 
write a letter to a friend, he has no right to print 
it in a periodical or a book without first obtaining your 
permission. In other words, you have not only a 
right to the product of your own mind, but you alone 
have the privilege of reproducing it or multiplying 
copies. The whole history of copyright controversy 
centers about the question, for how long shall you have 
this privilege? 

This question was not considered in the first copy- 
right case, recorded in the dim legendary history 
of Ireland. St. Columba, while yet a student and 
before he became saintly, secretly made a copy of a 
psalter in the possession of his teacher, Finian. But 
in 567 A.D. this copy was reclaimed, according to 
tradition, by the decision of King Dermott in the Halls 
of Tara: " To every cow her calf." It was not until 
the invention of printing that either copyright or 
its duration became of any importance. The second 
Royal Printer was given, in 1518, the exclusive priv- 
ilege for two years of printing a certain speech, to 
which this first copyright notice was appended. 



XIV INTRODUCTION 

Most other privileges were for a term of seven years. 
During tlie reign of Elizabeth the term of copyright 
received its greatest extension. The Stationers' Com- 
pany came to prohibit all printing in England except 
by tliose registered in its membership, but it was under- 
stood that such persons should enjoy the privilege 
forever. The turmoil of the Civil Wars affected pub- 
lishing almost as much as it did religion and politics. 
It was under the law of 1662 that Milton secured the 
license for publishing '' Paradise Lost." He lived 
to receive ten pounds from the publisher, Samuel 
Symmons, who in 1680 secured the perpetual copy- 
right from the widow of Milton for eight pounds. Mac- 
aulay speaks on pages 14-15 of the operation of this 
act. Charles II. renewed the charter of the Stationers' 
Company in 1684, confirming to proprietors of books 
'^ the sole right, power, and privilege and authority 
of printing, as has been usual heretofore." 

The ownership of copyright and the length of time 
it should run remained, however, in a chaotic state 
until the foundation of copyright in England and the 
United States to-day was laid by the famous law of 
Queen Anne that went into effect in 1710. It gave 
the author the sole right of printing for fourteen 
years and no longer, unless he at the end of that 
term secured the extension for another fourteen 
years. There was disagreement about the opera- 
tion of the law until a decision of the House of Lords 
in 1774 held that the statute of Anne took away the 
right of perpetual copyright. The only change up 
to the debates included in this volume was the ex- 
tension of the term in 1814 to twenty-eight years and 
the remainder of the author's life. In 1842, as we 
shall see, Macaulay secured the passage of an act ex- 
tending the term to forty-two years, or to the life of 
the author plus seven years. This remained the law 



INTRODUCTION xv 

of England until 1912, when the present law went 
into force, securing the right to the author for his life- 
time and fifty years more. 

III. The Debates of 1841 and 1842 

The superiority of Macaulay's speeches on copy- 
right cannot be seen or measured unless we run over 
the debate in which they were delivered. In 1837 
Thomas Noon Talfourd introduced a bill to amend 
the law by extending the term during which copyright 
should be valid. He had from his early twenties 
been intimate with Lamb, Wordsworth, Coleridge, 
and other literary men. His speech on that bill 
gained him great applause, but the bill itself was 
opposed b}^ most of the classes concerned; that is, 
by authors, publishers, and readers. Five successive 
times he introduced a measure, with the same want of 
success in parliament but with growing favor outside. 

On January 27, 1841, he again asked leave to bring in 
a bill which would secure copyright for a period of 
fifty years reckoned from the author's death. Mr. 
Warburton, who represented medical interests in 
legislation, was on his feet at once. He declared that 
^' he did not intend to let even a stage of the bill pass 
without offering to it his most strenuous and deter- 
mined opposition." These stages were five: (1) 
leave to bring in the bill, when there was usually 
little or no debate; (2) the first reading; if favored, 
the bill was ordered to be printed and a date set for 
the second reading; (3) a second reading, when the 
principle of the measure was discussed; if it was then 
voted dowm, it could not be considered again during 
that session; (4) consideration in a committee 
of the whole house or by a special committee, when 
details and amendments were discussed; when the 



xvi INTRODUCTION 

committee reported, a day was set for the third read- 
ing; (5) a third reading; if the bill then passed, 
it was sent to the House of Lords. 

When leave to bring in the bill was discussed on 
January 29, Mr. Warburton launched forth into a 
long speech against it. He could not agree that the 
question was one of natural right to the productions 
of one's own mind. He did not acknowledge such 
a thing as natural rights. The question was merely 
one of expediency. He would consequently consider 
the interests of authors, of publishers, and of the pub- 
lic. With regard to authors the proposed law amounted 
to perpetual copyright. It would therefore injure 
authors because it would make easier the suppression 
and mutilation of their works, and would even enable 
the descendants of authors to prevent the public 
from reading the works of genius. Publishers would 
not be benefited because they testified that current 
works remained in circulation only from fourteen 
to twenty years. The public would suffer because the 
monopoly created would raise the price of books. 
In spite of his opposition leave was given by a vote 
of 142 to 30 to bring in the bill and read it a first 
time. Apparently Serjeant Talfourd was at length 
to win his fight. 

On February 5 the bill came up for a second reading. 
In presenting it Serjeant Talfourd requested that even 
those who favored a thirty-year extension, the term 
in France, should vote for the second reading. He 
denied that he had overlooked the question of ex- 
pediency. Following the plan of Mr. Warburton's 
speech, he declared that the greatest authors of the 
time favored his bill, that the publishers, with one or 
two exceptions, were quite satisfied with the pro- 
visions of the bill, and that the public should first 
of all learn justice. He added that the same argu- 



INTRODUCTION xvii 

ments (that books would become dearer, that fewer 
would be written, fewer published, fewer sold) were 
used when in 1814 the term of copyright was extended 
from fourteen to twenty-eight years. His measure 
was necessary because (1) only in this way could 
authors be given the means of preserving the purity 
of their works and (2) it would overcome the tend- 
ency of the time to purchase works of light and airy 
character and would encourage that which was slow 
in production, high in aim, and lasting in duration. 

It was to this appeal that Macaulay replied in 
what the London " Times " the next day called a 
" long and clever speech against it " — his " First 
Speech on Copyright." The repeated applause with 
which he was greeted showed how telling his points 
were. To his argument Sir R. H. Inglis, an old- 
fashioned Tory, replied that the bill had no refer- 
ence to the origin of the right of property, but was 
founded on expediency, and that all Macaulay^s argu- 
ments against the proposed bill applied just as 
much to the present law. Mr. Serjeant Talfourd 
added that Macaulay's doctrine concerning property 
in works might be equally urged against all works, 
that the argument concerning the suppression of books 
might be applied to the present twenty-eight year 
period. He pointed out that Macaulay had not 
grappled with the great examples adduced in favor 
of the bill, as Wordsworth, Rogers, and Campbell. 
He denied that experience had shown that monopoly 
had increased the price of books. 

The vote was taken by having those who favored 
the bill pass into one lobby, while those opposed passed 
into another. The tellers reported a majority of seven 
against the further consideration of the measure. 
Thus Macaulay by a single speech turned the tide 
against a measure that gave promise of success. 



xviii INTRODUCTION 

His second speech was delivered against a bill to 
extend the term of copyright to twenty-five years after 
the author's death. This was introduced on March 3, 
1842, by Lord Mahon because Serjeant Talfourd was 
no longer in parliament. It passed by agreement 
through the first and second reading and was taken up 
on x\pril 6th by the House sitting as a committee of the 
whole. Lord Mahon made a long, clear, but not strik- 
ingly eloquent speech, a brief for which is given on 
p. 66. Macaulay delivered in reply his '' Second Speech 
on Copyright," arguing for a term of forty-two years 
from the date of publication. Sir R. H. Inglis again 
replied in the genial manner that had made him 
exceedingly popular in the House of Commons. He 
declared that no one could expect him, nor would 
he for a moment attempt, to follow the learned and 
eloquent speech, one full of so much research as that 
just delivered — indeed, during his whole life he had 
never known any person able to follow such a speech 
but one. He asserted, however, that Macaulay had 
overlooked one very prominent object of the bill — 
to allow dying authors to provide for their families. 
Besides, his cases had not, with one exception, been 
taken from the authors of the day. There were three 
illustrious living authors, Wordsworth, Campbell, 
and Southey, who would derive a greater advantage 
from Lord Mahon's bill than from Macaulay's plan. 
This he proved by reference to particular works and 
dates. 

It was Mr. Thomas Wakley who represented this 
year the opposition of medicine and science to any 
favors to letters and art. He had founded the famous 
medical journal, '' The Lancet," and had effected many 
reforms in hospital service and in surgery, but on 
the present occasion he displayed merely narrow 
prejudice. In the course of his attack he declared 



INTRODUCTION xix 

that the purpose of the bill was to give piotection 
by statute to literary quacks, illustrating his point 
by reading and holding up to ridicule some poems by 
the great poet Wordsworth. When questioned he 
replied that he could write " respectable " poetry 
by the mile. " Punch " ridiculed him at once, and 
later the humorist Thomas Hood belabored him with 
genial satire. 

Mr. Monckton Milnes, famous for his social rela- 
tions with authors, declared that Macaulay's plan 
would be little better than the existing law, since it 
afforded no protection to the author's family. He 
illustrated the action of the proposed amendment by 
discussing Southey's case at the time. 

The first and second clauses of the bill, which 
did not affect the term of copyright, passed; but there 
was further debate on the third, which read as follows : 

''And be it enacted that the copyright in every book 
which shall, after the passing of this act, be published 
in the lifetime of its author, shall endure for the 
natural life of such author, and for the further term 
of twenty-five years, commencing at the time of his 
death, and shall be the property of such author and 
his assigns: provided always that in no case shall 
the whole term be less than twenty-eight years." 

Sir Robert Peel, the great Tory prime minister at 
the time, remarked that he had always doubted the 
advisability of altering the law. He was now won 
over by Macaulay's arguments to favor the certain 
term of forty-two years, but he would like to add a 
period of seven years from the author's death. The 
wealthy bachelor Macaulay felt that such a provision 
would make literary men too inconsiderate of the 
future. When Lord John Russell, the famous Whig 
leader who had pushed through the Reform Bill of 
1832, asked for an acceptance of the seven-year addi- 



XX INTRODUCTION 

tion, Macaulay called for a division. The first vote 
was on the question whether the words, " and for the 
further term of twenty-five years commencing at the 
time of his death " should stand as part of the law. 
After a division it was found that the words were 
stricken out by a majority of twelve. The second 
vote was on whether the words '^ and for the further 
term of seven years commencing at the time of the 
author's death " be inserted. This was carried by a 
majority of fifty-eight. The third vote was on whether 
th3 words ''twenty-eight years'' should stand as a 
part of the clause. They were stricken out by a 
majority of seventy-nine. The whole clause as 
amended, with the words forty-two years inserted in 
place of " twenty-eight years," was then adopted 
by the same majority. The results of the voting 
were: 

1. Copyright should continue for the lifetime of 
an author and for the further term of seven years 
commencing at the time of his death. 

2. Copyright should in no case continue for a 
shorter period than forty-two years after the date of 
publication. 

The law was therefore essentiall}^ the one that 
Macaulay proposed. A weakness of his plan pointed 
out by Sir R. H. Inglis and made more apparent as 
the discussion advanced, was remedied by the seven- 
year clause, but in general it was his scheme which 
governed the duration of copyright for the next 
seventy years. It is not often that a debater wins 
so conspicuous a personal triumph. 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE ON MACAULAY 

The best biography of Macaulay is by all odds 
'^ The Life and Letters of Lord Macaula}^/' b^ Sir 
George Otto Trevelyan, originally issued in 1876. 
A very entertaining life it is. A much shorter one 
was written for the English Men of Letters Series 
by J. Cotter Morison. It not only gives a good brief 
account of his life but includes a criticism of his 
writings. 

For the student of Macaulay's oratory there are 
various editions of his speeches. They were collected 
into one volume, with his " Miscellaneous Writings '' 
many years ago and may now be had in a cheap 
edition at $1.00 (Longmans). The whole of the 
debates on copyright is recorded in Hansard's '' Par- 
liamentary Debates " for the years 1841 and 1842. 

Those interested in copyright will find the most 
complete account in Richard Rogers Bowker's " Copy- 
right, its History and its Law.'' (Houghton Mifflin 
Compam^ 1912.) It is sl " summary of the prin- 
ciples and practice of cop^aight with special reference 
to the American code of 1909 and the British act of 
1911." But as a matter of fact it treats of all kinds 
of copyright in every country, and gives the laws, 
the regulations for securing both the right and damages 
for infringement. There is an English w^ork by 
George Stuart Robertson, " The Law of Copyright " 
published by the Clarendon Press (1912) which 
explains fully the British law of 1911 and kindred 
matters. If you have not access to these, you may 
find interesting matter in some books now out of date : 

xxi 



xxii BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE ON MACAULAY 

George Haven Putnam's " The Question of Copy- 
right " (Putnam's, 1896), E. J. McGillivray's " The 
Law of Copyright" (Button, 1902), Colles and 
Hardy's " Playwright and Copyright in All Coun- 
tries " (Macmillan, 1906). 

Our copyriglit office at AVashington issues some 
bulletins of great use. Bulletin No. 14 is " The 
Copyright Law pf the United States of America. 
Being the act of March 4, 1909 (in force July 1, 
1909) as amended by the acts of August 24, 1912, 
March 2, 1913, and March 28, 1914, together with 
rules of practice and procedure under section 25 of the 
Supreme Court of the United States." It is sup- 
plied with an excellent index. Bulletin No. 3 is 
" Copyright Enactments of the United States, 1783- 
1906." This has been very carefully compiled by 
Thorvald Solberg, Register of Copyrights. It gives 
the laws passed by the original states, the acts of 
congress from 1790 to 1905, and the international 
and state regulations. Bulletin No. 16 is " Copy- 
right in England. Act 1 and 2 CJeo. 5. Ch. 46. 
An Act to Amend and Consolidate the Law Relating 
to Copyright, passed December 16, 1911." It too 
is fully indexed. 



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LINCOLN'S COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS 

I. Life of Lincoln 

Abraham Lincoln has been called the tj^pical 
American. He is surely one of the great men in all 
history. Yet he was born in a log cabin of one room, 
lighted by a single window, with one plank door and 
a huge chimney built outside at one end. This was 
near Hodgensville, Kentucky, on February 12, 1809. 
His father, who was a rather shiftless man, tried to 
better his condition by moving farther into the wilder- 
ness, near Gentryville, Indiana, when little Abe was 
only seven. When Abe was twenty the family again 
moved to a frontier region near Decatur, Illinois. 

During this time, Lincoln says, his education was 
defective. In fact, it amounted in all to not more 
than a year of schooling. As soon as he was old 
enough, his father made him assist in all kinds of 
work on the farm or in the forest. When he was not 
needed at home, his father hired him out at twenty- 
five cents a day to plough, chop wood, carpenter, take 
care of the horses, and help the women with the 
'^ chores." In the intervals betw^een work he went 
to the schools kept by itinerant teachers in those 
sparsely settled regions. In Kentucky he learned 
faster than any of his schoolmates, probably because 
he had the first requisite for progress — an eager 
desire for study. Even at that early age " he would 
get spicewood bushes, hack them up on a log, and 
burn them two or three together, for the purpose of 
giving light by which he might pursue his studies." 
From the wandering preachers he also got notions 
of public speaking, which he put into practice on 

xxviii 



INTRODUCTION xxix 

groups of his playmates. In Indiana, where bears 
and other wild animals then roved the woods, he 
learned little more. He declared that if a straggler 
supposed to understand Latin happened to sojourn 
in the neighborhood, he was looked upon as a wizard. 
There was absolutely nothing to excite ambition for 
education, yet he gained the fundamentals, reading 
writing, and ciphering. 

A few good books he read thoroughly, the Bible, 
^' ^sop's Fables," '' Robinson Crusoe," '' Pilgrim's 
Progress," a " Histor}^ of the United States," and 
Weem's " Life of Washington." So ambitious w^as 
he that in his own words " he read through every book 
he had ever heard of in that country, for a circuit of 
fifty miles." He kept a book in a chink in the logs 
to pore over in the morning as soon as it grew light 
enough. He pondered over what he read, making 
long extracts with a turkey-buzzard pen and brier- 
root ink. If he had no copy-book at hand, he would 
write with a charred stick on the wooden fire-shovel. 

He early earned a reputation for being able to 
explain things hard for the other boys to understand. 
He later said of his boyhood: 

'^ Among my earliest recollections I remember how, 
when a mere child, I used to get irritated when any- 
body talked to me in a way I could not understand. 
I do not think I ever got angry at anything else in 
my life; but that always disturbed my temper, and 
has ever since. I can remember going to my little 
bedroom, after hearing the neighbors talk of an even- 
ing with my father, and spending no small part of 
the night walking up and down and trying to make 
out what was the exact meaning of some of their, 
to me, dark sayings. I could not sleep, although I 
tried to, when I got on such a hunt for an idea until 
I had caught it; and when I thought I had got it. 



XXX INTRODUCTION 

I was not satisfied until I had repeated it over and 
over; until I had put it in language plain enough, 
as I thought, for any boy I knew to comprehend/' 

So self-reliant had he become by eighteen that he 
read the ^^ Revised Statutes of Indiana/' which con- 
tained the Declaration of Independence, the Con- 
stitution of the United States, and the Ordinance of 
1787, in addition to the laws of the state. He dis- 
cussed this abstruse collection intelligently with some 
of the neighbors. The storekeeper at Gentryville 
took a newspaper. Lincoln led in the discussion 
of its contents, for the group recognized his remarks 
as the best informed and the shrewdest. In the 
fields the hands would throw dow^n scythes and axes 
to form a circle around him as he mounted a stump 
and repeated the sermon of the day before or spoke 
on some political topic. 

Shortly after the family moved to Illinois, Abraham 
at twenty-one started out in life for himself with only 
his two hands as capital. After taking a stock of 
produce to New Orleans he became a clerk in a country 
store at NevN^ Salem, a village near Springfield which 
no longer exists. He immediately became popular, 
partly because he was the strongest man and the best 
wrestler in the country and partly because he seldom 
lost his temper and never fought except to right 
some wrong. He continued his education in the ample 
leisure that his duties left, walking several miles to 
argue in a debating society and studying Kirkham's 
grammar until he understood everything in it. After 
serving as captain in the Black Hawk War, he went into 
a partnership, but continued to study a great deal. 
He read Burns and Shakespeare and pondered over 
the famous legal authority, Blackstone. He had 
one day bought a barrel of goods to oblige an emigrant 
to the West. On emptying it later he discovered 



INTRODUCTION xxxi 

the volumes of Blackstone at the bottom. '' The 
more I read, the more intensely interested I became," 
he declared nearly thirty years afterward. '' Never 
in my whole life was my mind so thoroughly absorbed. 
I read until I devoured them." 

This power to master subjects by himself, to do his 
own thinking, was displayed again in his learning 
surveying. When the county surveyor needed depu- 
ties, he asked Lincoln to serve. The fact that Lin- 
coln knew nothing about surveying made no differ- 
ence, for he was given time to learn. He at once 
procured a treatise on the subject. For six weeks 
he studied it and a few others incessantly, often sitting 
up until nearly dawn, but in those six weeks he 
mastered a subject that an ordinary person would 
have needed six months to learn. What is more, 
his surveys were always correct. 

Another trait that he manifested during this time 
w^as honesty. While he was a clerk, he once dis- 
covered that he had taken six cents too much from a 
customer. As soon as the store was closed, he walked 
three miles to i^eturn the sum. The last thing he 
did before closing late one afternoon was to sell a 
pound of tea. On coming back in the morning he 
discovered that the weight in the scales w^as four 
ounces. He immediately shut the store to deliver the 
rest of the pound. The store finally failed. His 
partner died, leaving Lincoln with a debt of eleven 
hundred dollars. He called it the '^ national debt," 
it was so heavy. But for fourteen years he kept 
paying on it at the high rate of interest then common, 
until he had settled for the whole. 

Lincoln's immense personal popularity made it 
easy for him for eight years, from 1834 to 1842, to 
defeat any opponent for the state legislature. He 
bought his first suit of clothes, of country jeans, when 



xxxii INTRODUCTION 

he started out on foot for his first t^rm at the state 
capitol, seventy-five miles away. He early showed 
his political adroitness by successfully directing the 
measure for the removal of the capitol to Spring- 
field. In 1S37 he started the practice of law in that 
promising city of fifteen hundred inhabitants. From 
1842 to 1854, with the exception of one term in Con- 
gress, 1847-1849; he devoted most of his time to the 
profession. 

His pleadings were not very learned. Indeed, he 
rather neglected precedents, but presented the argu- 
ment to the jury so logically and persuasively that he 
seldom lost. This was partly due to the fact that he 
would never take a case in which he did not Ijelieve. 
His practice is illustrated by the following incident: 
After listening attentively in his Springfield office 
to a man who talked earnestly and in a low voice, 
Lincoln at length broke in: ^' Yes, we can doubt- 
less gain your case for you; we can set a whole neigh- 
borhood at loggerheads; we can distress a widowed 
mother and her six fatherless children and thereby 
get you six hundred dollars to which you seem to have 
a legal claim, but which rightfully belongs, it appears 
to me, as much to the woman and her children as it 
does to you. You must remember that some things 
legally right are not morally right. We shall not take 
your case, but will give you a little advice for which 
we will charge you nothing. You seem to be a 
sprightly, energetic man; we would advise you to try 
your hand at making six hundred dollars in some 
other way." 

In arguing a case he unerringly went to the root of 
the matter, stripped all verbiage from the idea, and 
presented the essential points with unfailing good 
humor, illustrated from an unrivalled fund of witty 
stories. One of his most famous trials was the defence 



INTRODUCTION xxxiii 

of Duff Armstrong against a charge of murder. The 
most damaging evidence was given by one Allen, 
who testified that he had seen Armstrong strike the 
blow between ten and eleven o'clock in the evening. 
When asked how he saw it, he said that the moon 
was shining brightly. Lincoln by his questions kept 
him repeating the statement until it stood out before 
the jury as the pivotal point in the case. At the close 
of his address to the jury he said he could prove 
Allen's testimony false. Allen never saw the blow 
struck, because between ten and eleven o'clock that 
night the moon was too low in the heavens. He then 
passed an almanac among the jurors to prove his 
statement. When the jury filed out, he said to the 
mother, '^ Aunt Hannah, j^our son will be free before 
sundown." And he was. For his services Lincoln 
accepted from her no fee. His fees were always 
smaller than other lawyers thought proper. Though 
he rose to the head of the bar of Illinois, and tried 
over a hundred cases before the Supreme Court of the 
state, his income was usually only between two and 
three thousand dollars a year. 

II. Lincoln and Slavery 

To understand the rest of his life we must now 
glance at his attitude toward slavery. Slavery be- 
came a question of national importance after Eli 
Whitney's invention of the cotton-gin in 1793, for 
only then did slave labor become profitable. To the 
ensuing controversy between tlie northern and the 
southern states a measure of peace was given in 1820 
by the Missouri Compromise, which forbade slavery 
in all states to be admitted thereafter from territory 
north of 36° 30' north latitude, the southern bound- 
ary of Missouri. 



xxxiv INTRODUCTION 

When Lincoln began his political life in Illinois 
there was much sentiment in favor of slavery. An 
abolitionist was regarded as an Eastern crank. In 
1837 the legislature even passed almost unanimously 
a set of resolutions disapproving of abolition societies 
and declaring the right of property in slaves sacred. 
Now Lincoln had seen something of the conditions 
of slavery on the Ohio River and in two trips to New 
Orleans. He early came to have a well-grounded 
opinion on the subject, and he always had the courage 
to act as he believed right. Consequently he, with a 
single other man, boldly signed a protest, affirming 
their belief that " the institution of slavery is founded 
on both injustice and bad policy." 

In private life he was equally firm. To his friend 
Speed, a slaveholder, he wrote: " In 1841 you and 
I had together a tedious low-water trip on a steam- 
boat from Louisville to St. Louis. You may remember 
as well as I do that from Louisville to the mouth of 
the Ohio there were on board ten or a dozen slaves 
shackled together with irons. That sight was a con- 
stant torture to me." 

The clearness of his vision on moral matters and the 
strength of his convictions appeared again while he 
was in Congress. He introduced a bill to prohibit 
the slave trade in the District of Columbia, and on 
the proposal to prohibit slavery in the territory 
that might be acquired by the country after the war 
with Mexico he said he voted " about forty-two 
times." Shortly after he left Congress the whole 
question was supposed to be closed by the Compro- 
mise of 1850. He settled down quietly in Spring- 
field, losing interest in politics and devoting liis ener- 
gies to his law practice. 

From this quiet he was aroused in 1854 by the pas- 
sage of a bill giving territorial government to Kansas 



INTRODUCTION xxxv 

and Nebraska. This measure, introduced by Senator 
Douglas of Illinois, repealed the Missouri Compro- 
mise and permitted the people who should settle in 
new territories to reject or establish slavery as they 
should see fit. Such was the theory of " popular 
sovereignty." Lincoln was aroused. He felt that 
slavery threatened to spread over the whole country. 
When Douglas returned to Illinois to defend himself, 
Lincoln was chosen to meet him. In a speech at the 
State Fair in Springfield his feelings came near stifling 
utterance. He quivered with emotion. The house 
WIS still as death. That winter in a race for the 
United States Senate he induced his followers against 
their will to vote against him so as to elect a Democrat 
who was opposed to Douglas's doctrines. 

In the spring of 1855 he went to the convention at 
Bloomington at which the new Republican party was 
organized in Illinois. He was advised not to attend 
because the Republicans had gathered so little strength 
that to join with them would seal his political future. 
He not only appeared in the hall but responded to a 
spontaneous call to speak. His address has become 
famous as the " Lost Speech." One of the news- 
paper men said: '' I became so absorbed in his mag- 
netic oratory that I forgot myself and ceased to take 
notes; and joined with the convention in cheering 
and stamping and clapping to the end of his speech. 
. . . All the newspaper men present had been equally 
carried away." But they all wrote to their papers 
that his fervid and fearless address was the greatest 
speech ever made in Illinois. 

The Democrats won the campaign of 1856, electing 
Buchanan president, but he was scarcely in the chair 
before the Republican party, though yet in its infancy, 
was solidified and greatly strengthened by the Dred 
Scott decision of the Supreme Court. This held in 



XXX vi INTRODUCTION 

effect that Congress could not exclude slavery from the 
territories. The agitation was growing more and 
more violent when the Republican convention met in 
June, 1858, at Springfield and designated Lincoln 
as its first and only choice as the successor of Stephen 
A. Douglas. For weeks Lincoln had been preparing 
for the speech of acceptance by jotting down on 
envelopes and stray pieces of paper ideas and phrases 
suitable for the occasion. The day before delivering 
it he read this carefully prepared address to some of 
his friends. They shook their heads at the figure 
in the first paragraph: ''A house divided against 
itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot 
endure permanently half slave and half free. I do 
not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will 
cease to be divided. It will become all one thing 
or all the other." After listening patientl}^ to their 
prediction of defeat, he rose from his chair and said: 
'' If it is decreed that I should go down because of this 
speech, then let me go down linked to the truth — let 
me die in the advocacy of what is just and right." 
It was a demonstration of wisdom and courage very 
rare in political life. 

The same penetrating insight into the essential 
elements of the question appeared in his celebrated 
debate with Douglas that summer and fall. It was 
the most exciting contest that had ever been held 
in Illinois. Halls were not large enough for the 
audiences. The speeches were delivered in the after- 
noon, in groves, or on the open prairie. The discussion 
served but to deepen Lincoln's two firmest convic- 
tions, that slavery was wrong and that Congress 
had the power and the right to control it in the terri- 
tories. The first Douglas left in the background, 
but the second he was forced to deny. In the second 
of the seven meetings Lincoln propounded to Douglas 



INTRODUCTION xxxvii 

a question which all his friends told him would cost 
him the senatorship. It was: '' Can the people of a 
United States territory in any lawful way, against 
the wish of any citizen of the United States, exclude 
slavery from its limits prior to the formation of a 
state constitution? " If Douglas answered No, Illinois 
would not elect him to the Senate. If he answered 
Yes, the South would abandon him. Lincoln saw 
this very clearly. He was willing to lose the senator- 
ship if the Republicans could thereby gain enough 
strength to defeat Douglas in 1860. So he replied 
to his friends: ^' I am after larger game; the battle 
of 1860 is worth a hundred of this." It is most likely 
that he was thinking not of his own personal gain in 
that battle, but of the success of his party and prin- 
ciples. When his defeat was announced to him in 
November, he declared to a friend: ^^ I am glad I 
made the late race. It gave me a hearing on the great 
and durable question of the age which I could have 
had in no other way; and though I now sink out of 
view and shall be forgotten, I believe I have made 
some marks which will tell for the cause of liberty 
long after I am gone." 

Looking back at the contest, we admire Lincoln's 
political sagacity and moral grandeur. The effect 
at the time was to make him knowm all over the coun- 
try as a leader in the growing party. He sprang 
'^ at once from the position of a capital fellow and a 
leading lawyer of Illinois to a national reputation." 
Douglas was at the time probably the foremost leader 
in political life. He was recognized as the readiest 
and ablest debater in the United States Senate. Yet 
he said of Lincoln: '^ I have been in Congress six- 
teen years, and there is not a man in the Senate I 
would not rather encounter in debate." The New 
York ^'Evening Post" said: *' No man of his gen- 



xxxviii INTRODUCTION 

eration has grown more rapidly before the country 
than Lincoln in this canvass." An Eastern statesman 
asked: '' Do you realize that no greater speeches 
have been made on public questions in the history 
of the country; that his laiowledge of the subject 
is profound, his logic unanswerable, his style inimit- 
able? " 

The Illinois Republican Committee published both 
sides of the debate in a single volume in 1S59. In 
1S60 it was reprinted in Ohio as a campaign document. 
His speeches thus obtained an unprecedented circu- 
lation in print. Everywhere they were read as the 
most complete and able statement of the Republican 
position. In fact, it was he who had welded into a 
harmonious whole the principles of this recently 
formed but rapidly growing organization. In 1S59 
he was induced to speak against Douglas in Ohio in 
the gubernatorial race. Douglas's Columbus speech 
of September 7 he honored by an immediate reply 
and by making it the starting-point for his most 
laboriously prepared political argument. Such was 
the address delivered at Cooper Institute in New York 
on February 27, 1860. 

III. The Cooper Institute Address 

The man whose moral earnestness and self-dis- 
ciplined mind had given him a profound comprehen- 
sion of the whole slavery question eagerly seized the 
opportunity to address an Eastern audience. One 
morning in October, 1859, he rushed into his law 
office in Springfield with a letter from New York 
inviting him to lecture at Plymouth Church, Brooklyn. 
After some conference with his friends he replied that 
he would speak on the political situation some time 
late in February. Probably for financial reasons the 



INTRODUCTION xxxix 

obligation for the course wa^ assumed by the Young- 
Men's Republican Union, which invited him on Feb- 
ruary 9, 1860, to deliver a lecture to an audience of 
the " better, but busier citizens, who never attend a 
political meeting." 

He spent the winter in careful preparation in the 
state library at Springfield, turning over many vol- 
umes and searching narrowly the records of our 
early political history. Yet after this painstaking 
and thorough study he felt misgivings. When he 
arrived in New York, he learned that he would speak, 
not in Brooklyn, but in the auditorium of the recently 
completed Cooper Institute. Fearing he was not 
quite equal to the distinguished audience and the 
great opportunity it offered to impress himself on the 
East, he spent nearly two and a half days in going 
over the ground and revising his notes. He even 
arranged with a friend to sit in the rear of the hall 
and raise his high hat on a cane if he did not speak 
loudly enough. For the auditorium, which is still 
used for important public meetings, was then regarded 
as mammoth. 

The night of February 27 was snowy. There was, 
besides, a charge of twenty-five cents for admission, 
so that the hall was not entirely filled. A large num- 
ber of people preferred standing to sitting in the 
rear seats. It was an unusually intellectual and 
cultured audience that greeted him with loud and 
prolonged applause when David Dudley Field and 
William Cullen Bryant escorted him to the plat- 
form, which was crowded with distinguished Republi- 
cans. The " Tribune '' had urged all Republicans 
to hear him because he might never be heard in the 
city again. Bryant introduced him merely as " an 
eminent citizen of the West, whom you know, or 
whom you have known hitherto only by fame." 



xl INTRODUCTION 

But according to the report of the " Evening Post " 
the next day: ''At the conclusion of Mr. Lincoln's 
address the great audience rose, almost to a man 
and expressed their approbation by the most enthusi- 
astic applause, the waving of handkerchiefs, and re- 
peated cheers/' 

How he felt on that memorable occasion he related 
to his partner on his return home: '' For once in his 
life he was greatly abashed over his personal appear- 
ance. The new suit of clothes which he donned on 
his arrival in New York were ill-fitting garments, 
and showed the creases made while packed in the 
valise; and for a long time after he began his speech 
and before he became ' warmed up ' he imagined 
that the audience noticed the contrast between his 
Western clothes and the neat-fitting suits of Mr. 
Bryant and others who sat on the platform. The 
collar of his coat on the right side had an unpleasant 
way of flying up whenever he raised his arm to gesticu- 
late. He imagined the audience noticed this also.'' 

How others were impressed may be seen in the 
account of Hon. Joseph H. Choate, later ambassador 
to Great Britain and one of our greatest orators: 

" He appeared in every sense of the word like one of 
the plain people among whom he loved to be counted. 
At first sight there was nothing impressive or imposing 
about him — except that his great stature singled him 
out of the crowd; his clothes hung awkwardly on his 
giant frame, his face was of a dark pallor, without 
the slightest tinge of color; his seamed and rugged 
features bore the furrows of hardship and struggle; 
his deep-set eyes looked sad and anxious; his coun- 
tenance in repose gave little evidence of that brain 
power which had raised him from the lowest to the 
highest station among his countrymen; as he talked 
to me before the meeting, he seemed ill at ease, with 



INTRODUCTION xli 

that sort of apprehension which a young man might 
feel before presenting himself to a new and strange 
audience, whose critical disposition he dreaded. It 
was a great audience, including all the noted men — 
all the learned and cultured — of his party in New York: 
editors, clergymen, statesmen, lawyers, merchants, 
critics. They were all very curious to hear him. 
His fame as a powerful speaker had preceded him, 
and exaggerated rumor of his wit — the worst fore- 
runner of an orator — had reached the East. When 
Mr. Bryant presented him, on the high platform of 
the Cooper Institute, a vast sea of eager upturned 
faces greeted him, full of intense curiosity to see what 
this rude child of the people was like. He was equal 
to the occasion. When he spoke he was transformed; 
his eye kindled, his voice rang, his face shone and 
seemed to light up the whole assembly. For an hour 
and a half he held his audience in the hollow of his 
hand. His style of speech and manner of delivery 
were severely simple. W^hat Lowell called ' the 
grand simplicities of the Bible,' with which he was 
so familiar, were reflected in his discourse. With no 
attempt at ornament or rhetoric, without parade or 
pretence, he spoke straight to the point. If any 
came expecting the turgid eloquence or the ribaldry 
of the frontier, they must have been startled at the 
earnest and sincere purity of his utterances. It was 
marvelous to see how this untutored man, by mere 
self-discipline and the chastening of his own spirit, 
had outgrown all meretricious arts, and found his 
own way to the grandeur and strength of absolute 
simplicity." 

The next morning the " Tribune " printed the fol- 
lowing editorial : 

" The Speech of Abraham Lincoln at the Cooper 
Institute last evening was one of the happiest and most 



xlii INTRODUCTION 

convincing political arguments ever made in this 
City, and was addressed to a crowded and most 
appreciating audience. Since the days of Clay and 
Webster, no man has spoken to a larger assemblage 
of the intellect and mental culture of our City. Mr. 
Lincoln is one of nature's orators, using his rare 
powers solely and effectively to elucidate and con- 
vince, though their inevitable effect is to delight and 
electrify as well. We present herewith a very full 
and accurate report of this Speech; yet the tones, 
the gestures, the kindling eye and the mirth-provok- 
ing look, defy the reporter's skill. The vast assem- 
blage frequently rang with cheers and shouts of ap- 
plause, Avhich were prolonged and intensified at the 
close. No man ever before made such an impression 
on his first appeal to a New- York audience." 

Yet the completeness of his success was not im- 
mediately understood. After the address he was taken 
to supper at the Athenaeum Club, where five or six 
of the Republicans who happened to be in the build- 
ing were invited in. When the con^'ersation turned 
on the prospects of the Republican party, one of those 
who had not heard him enquired: ''Mr. Lincoln, 
what candidate do 3^ou' really think would be most 
likely to carry Illinois?" Lincoln replied indirectly: 
" Illinois is a peculiar state, in three parts. In north- 
ern Illinois Mr. Seward would have a larger majority 
than I could get. In middle Illinois I think I could 
call out a larger vote than Mr. Seward. In southern 
Illinois it would make no difference who was the can- 
didate." Nearly every one there took the answer to 
b3 merely illustrative. 

When the party broke up, Mr. Nott, who edited the 
speech for campaign circulation, started to walk down 
to the Astor House with Lincoln. But as Lincoln 
was limping because his new boots hurt him, they 



INTRODUCTION xiiii 

soon boarded a street car. Mr. Nott got off when 
it arrived at his street, allowing Lincoln, looking sad 
and lonely, to ride quite alone to the side door of the 
Astor House. When he next came to New York, 
he rode down Broadway at noonday, standing erect 
in an open barouche drawn by four white horses. 
Long lanes of patriotic citizens stood in the streets 
and on the sidewalks, or leaned from windows and 
from housetops to cheer him as the President of the 
United States. 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE ON LINCOLN 

Of the almost innumerable lives of Lincoln, a very 
good short biography is that by Norman Hapgood, 
'' Abraham Lincoln. The Man of the People '' (Mac- 
millan, 1909). It brings out clearly his closeness 
to the common people throughout his career. Prob- 
ably the most interesting to the senior high school 
pupil is '' Herndon's Lincoln. The True Story of a 
Great Life. The History and Personal Recollections 
of Abraham Lincoln by William H. Herndon. For 
Twenty Years his Friend and Law Partner.'' This 
appears in several editions, a good one being by 
Appleton (1909). A very complete and readable 
record is Ida M. Tarbell's '' The Life of Abraham 
Lincoln." It attracted a good deal of attention when 
it ran in '^ McClure's Magazine." partly because of the 
profuse illustrations. (Doubleday & McClure Co., 
1900.) An entertaining mine of information is 
Allen Thorndike Rice's ^' Reminiscences of Abraham 
Lincoln by Distinguished Men of his Time." Of the 
several editions a good one is issued by Harper & 
Brothers (1909). A study of his relation to our 
history and government is John T. Morse's ^' Abraham 
Lincoln " in the American Statesmen Series (Hough- 
ton Mifflin, 1893). The standard biography is that 
written by his secretaries, John G. Nicolay and John 
Hay, '^Abraham Lincoln: A History." It is issued 
in ten volumes by the Century Company (1890). 
John G. Nicolay also wrote a '' Short Life of Abraham 
Lincoln." (Century Company, 1902.) Boys and 
girls will be fascinated by Helen Nicolay 's '^ Boy's 

xliv 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE ON LINCOLN xlv 

Life of Abraham Lincoln" (Century Company, 1906). 
A simple and clear account is Charles W. Moores's 
^' The Life of Abraham Lincoln for Boys and Girls." 
The remarkable influence which Lincoln exerted over 
men is described in Alonzo Rothschild's " Lincoln, 
Master of Men" (Houghton Mifflin, 1906). His 
life and practices as a lawyer are recounted in Fred- 
erick Trevor Hill's " Lincoln the Lawyer " (Century 
Company, 1906). 

Of the essays and addresses on Lincoln one of the 
most eloquent is that delivered by Joseph H. Choate 
before the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution on 
November 13, 1900, while he was our ambassador 
to Great Britain (T. Y. Crowell & Co., 1901). 
Ralph Waldo Emerson's remarks at the funeral ser- 
vices held in Concord, Massachusetts, April 19, 1865, 
(Complete Works, Vol. II, 1SS4), show how clearly 
his greatness was perceived at the time of his assas- 
sination. The same is seen in James Russell Lowell's 
essay, which appeared in the " North American Re- 
view " for January, 1864, as comment on Lincoln's 
annual message of December 9, 1863. (My Study 
Windows, 1871 or Political Essays, 1890.) An excel- 
lent review of his whole life is Carl Schurz's '' Abraham 
Lincoln." (The essays of Schurz, Emerson, and 
Lowell are bound up together in the Riverside Litera- 
ture Series.) 

The " Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln " 
have been edited in two volumes by Nicolay and Hay 
(Century Company, 1894). A very handsome edi- 
tion in twelve volumes is issued by the F. D. Tandy 
Company (1905-6). Probably the handiest edition 
of his " Speeches and Letters " is that edited by Merwin 
Roe in the Everyman's Library (E. P. Button). 
His " Speeches " have been compiled by L. E. Chit- 
tenden (Dodd, Mead & Company, 1895). An ex- 



xlvi BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE OX LINCOLN 

cellent edition of " Selections from Inaugurals, Ad- 
dresses and Letters " is Dodge's (Longmans, Green, 
& Co., 1913). The most convenient edition of the 
Lincoln-Douglas Debates is George Haven Putnam's 
(G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1912). The edition of the 
Cooper Institute address which was issued in Septem- 
ber, 1860, for campaign use, is printed in the appendix 
of George Haven Putnam's " Aljraham Lin<^oln. 
The People's Leader in the Struggle for National 
Existence." (Putnam's, 1909.) Written for his chil- 
dren and grandchildren, the biography will give any 
boy or girl a good notion of Lincoln's place in our 
history. The speech is prefaced by several inter- 
esting letters as well as by the original introduction. 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 



Life op Lincoln. 



Contemporary 
Biography. 



Contemporary 
American History. 



1809. Lincoln born, Feb 
12. 



1816. Family moved to 
Indiana. 

1818. Mother died. 

1819. Father married 
Sarah Johnston. 



1830. Family moved to 
Illinois. 

1831. Settled in New 
Salem. 

1832. Enlisted in the 
Black Hawk War; un- 
successful candidate 
for the legislature. 

1833. Postmaster o f 
New Salem; deputy 
surveyor's clerk. 

1834. Elected to t h e 
legislature. 



1836. Reelected to the 
legislature. Presiden- 
tial Elector. 

1837. Admitted to the 
bar. Moved to Spring- 
field. 

1838. Reelected to t h e 
legislature. 

1840. Presidential Elec- 
tor. 



1842. Married to Marv 
Todd. 



18U9. Gladstone, Dar- 
win, Tennyson, Poe 
Holmes born. 

1813. Douglas born. 



1822. Grant born. 



1830. Douglas moved to 
New York. 



1833. Douglas moved to 
Illinois. 

1834. Douglas admitted 
to the bar. 

1835. Douglas elected 
State's Attorney. 

1836. Douglas elected to 
the legislature. 

1837. Douglas appoint- 
ed Register of the 
Land Office; nomi- 
nated for Congress. 



1840. Douglas appoint- 
ed Judge of the Illinois 
Supreme Court. 



1809. Madison Presi- 
dent. 



1816. Indiana admitted 

as a state. 
1818. Illinois admitted 

as a state. 



1820. Missouri C o m - 
promise. 

1821. Missouri admitted 
as a state. 

1829. Jackson Presi- 
dent. 

1830. Speeches of Hayne 
and Webster. 

1831. Publication of The 
Liberator. 

1832. Founding of the 
New England Anti- 
Slavery Sogiety. 

1833. Founding of the 
AmericanAnti-Slavery 
Society. 



1837. Van Buren Presi- 
dent. Murder of Owen 
Love joy. 



1841. Harrison Presi- 
dent. Tyler Presi- 
dent. 



xlvii 



xlviii 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABl.'E— Continued 



Life of Lincoln 



Contemporary 
Biography. 



1844. Presidential Elec 
tor. 



1846. Elected to Con- 



1848. Presidential Elec- 
tor. 



1854. Reelected to the 
legislature. 

1855. Resigned from the 
legislature. Candi- 
date for the U. S. 
Senate. 

1856. Candidate for 
nomination for Vice- 
President. 



1858. Candidate for the 
U. S. Senate. 



1860. Cooper Institute 
Address. Elected 
President. 

1861. Left Springfield, 
Feb. 11; inaugurated 
March 4. 



1862. The Preliminary 
Emancipation Procla- 
mation, Sept. 22. 

1863. The Final Eman- 
cipation Proclama- 
tion, Jan. 1. The 
Gettysburg Address, 
Nov. 19. 

1864. Reelected to the 
Presidency. 

1865. Inaugurated, Mar. 
4. Assassinated, 
April 14; died, April 
15; buried at Spring- 
field, May 4. 



1844. Douglas 
to Congress. 



elected 



1847. Douglas elected U. 
S. Senator; moved to 
Chicago. 



1850. Death of Calhoun 



1852. Death of Clay and 
of Webster. 

1853. Douglas reelected 
Senator. 



1859. Douglas reelected 
to the Senate, 

1860. Douglas Demo- 
cratic candidate for 
the Presidency. 

1861. Douglas died.June 
3. McClellan Com- 
mander-in-Chief. 



1864. Grant appointed 
Lieutenant-General. 



Contemporary 
American History. 



1845. Polk President. 
Texas admitted as a 

1846-48. VV^ar with 
Mexico. 



1849. Taylor President. 

1850. Fillmore Presi- 
dent. Clay's Com- 
promise Measure. 



1853. Pierce President. 



1854. Kansas-Nebraska 
Bill. 



1856. Fremont first Re- 
publican candidate for 
the presidency. Civil 
war in Kansas. 

1857. Buchanan Presi- 
dent. The Dred Scott 
Decision. 

1858. Lincoln - Douglas 
Debates. 

1859. Death of John 
Brown. 

1860. South Carolina Or- 
dinance of Secession. 

1861. Fall of Fort Sum- 
ter, April 12. Battle 
of Bull Run, July 21. 
Kansas admitted as a 

1862. Slavery abolished 
in the District of Co- 
lumbia, April 16. 

1863. Battle of Gettys- 
burg, July 1-5. 



1864. Battles of the Wa- 
derness. May 6-7. 

1865. Fall of Richmond, 
April 3. Surrender of 
Lee, April 9. Johnson 
sworn in as President, 
April 15. 



MACAULAY'S 
SPEECHES ON COPYRIGHT 



THE FIRST SPEECH ON COPYRIGHT 

Delivered in the House of Commons 
February 5th, 1841 



Though, Sir, it is in some sense agreeable to approach 
a subject with which poUtical animosities have noth- 
ing to do, I offer myself to your notice with some 
reluctance. It is painful to me to take a course which 
may possibly be misunderstood or misrepresented 5 
as unfriendly to the interests of literature and literary 
men. It is painful to me, I will add, to oppose my 
honorable and learned friend on a question which 
he has taken up from the purest motives, and which 
he regards with a parental interest. These feelings 10 
have hitherto kept me silent when the law of copy- 
right has been under discussion. But as I am, on full 
consideration, satisfied that the measure before us 
will, if adopted, inflict grievous injury on the public, 
without conferring any compensating advantage on 15 
men of letters, I think it my duty to avow that opinion 
and to defend it. 

The first thing to be done, Sir, is to settle on what 
principles the question is to be argued. Are we free 
to legislate for the public good, or are we not? Is 20 
this a question of expediency, or is it a question 
of right? Many of those who have written and 
petitioned against the existing state of things treat 
the question as one of right. The law of nature, 

3 



4 COPYRIGHT 

according to them, gives to every man a sacred and 
indefeasible property in his own ideas, in the fruits 
of his own reason and imagination. The legislature 
has indeed the power to take away this property, 
5 just as it has the power to pass an act of attainder 
for cutting off an innocent man's head without a trial. 
But, as such an act of attainder would be legal mur- 
der, so would an act invading the right of an author 
to his copy be according to these gentlemen, legal 

10 robbery. 

Now, Sir, if this be so, let justice be done, cost 
w^iat it may. I am not prepared, like my honorable 
and learned friend, to agree to a compromise between 
right and expediency, and to commit an injustice for 

15 the public convenience. But I must say, that his 
theory soars far beyond the reach of my faculties. 
It is not necessary to go, on the present occasion, 
into a metaphysical inquiry about the origin of the 
right of property; and certainly nothing but the 

20 strongest necessity would lead me to discuss a sub- 
ject so likely to be distasteful to the House. I agree, 
I own, with Paley in thinking that property is the 
creature of the law, and that the law w4iich creates 
property can be defended only on this ground, that it 

25 is a law beneficial to mankind. But it is unnecessary 
to debate that point. For, even if I believed in a 
natural right of property, independent of utility and 
anterior to legislation, I should still deny that this 
right could survive the original proprietor. Few, I 

30 apprehend, even of those who have studied in the 
most mystical and sentimental schools of moral 
philosophy, will be disposed to maintain that there 
is a natural law of succession older and of higher 
authority than any human code. If there be, it is 

35 quite certain that we have abuses to reform much 
m^ore serious than any connected with the question of 



COPYRIGHT 5 

copyright. For this natural law can be only one; 
and the modes of succession in the Queen's dominions 
are twenty. To go no further than England, land 
generally descends to the eldest son. In Kent the 
sons share and share alike. In many districts the 5 
youngest takes the whole. Formerly a portion of a 
man's personal property was secured to his family; 
and it was only of the residue that he could dispose 
by will. Now he can dispose of the whole by will: 
but you limited his power, a few years ago, by enact- 10 
ing that the will should not be valid unless there were 
two witnesses. If a man dies intestate, his personal 
property generally goes according to the statute of 
distributions; but there are local customs which 
modify that statute. Now which of- all these systems 15 
is conformed to the eternal standard of right? Is it 
primogeniture, or gavelkind, or borough English? 
Are wills jure divinol Are the two witnesses jure 
divino? Might not the pars rationahilis of our old 
law have a fair claim to be regarded as of celestial 20 
institution? Was the statute of distributions enacted 
in Heaven long before it was adopted by Parliament? 
Or is it to Custom of York, or to Custom of London, 
that this preeminence belongs? Surely, Sir, even 
those who hold that there is a natural right of prop- 25 
erty must admit that rules prescribing the manner 
in which the effects of deceased persons shall be 
distributed are purely arbitrary, and originate alto- 
gether in the will of the legislature. If so, Sir, there 
is no controversy between my honorable and learned 30 
friend and myself as to the principles on which this 
question is to be argued. For the existing law gives 
an author copyright during his natural life; nor do 
I propose to invade that privilege, which I should, 
on the contrary, be prepared to defend strenuously 35 
against any assailant. The only point in issue be- 



6 COPYRIGHT 

tween us is, how long after an author's death the 
State shall recognize a copyright in his representa- 
tives and assigns; and it can, I thinls:, hardly be 
disputed by any rational man that this is a point 
5 which the legislature is free to determine in the way 
which may appear to be most conducive to the general 
good. 

We may now, therefore, I think, descend from 
these high regions, where we are in danger of being 

10 lost in the clouds, to firm ground and clear light. 
Let us look at this question like legislators, and after 
fairly balancing conveniences and inconveniences, 
pronounce between the existing law of copyright and 
the law now proposed to us. The question of copy- 

15 right. Sir, like most questions of civil prudence, is 
neither black nor white, but gray. The system of 
copyright has great advantages and great disad- 
vantages; and it is our business to ascertain what 
these are, and then to make an arrangement under 

20 which the advantages may be as far as possible se- 
cured, and the disadvantages as far as possible ex- 
cluded. The charge which I bring against my honor- 
able and learned friend's bill is this, that it leaves 
the advantages nearly what they are at present, 

25 and increases the disadvantages at least four-fold. 
The advantages arising from a system of copy- 
right are obvious. It is desirable that we should 
have a supply of good books: we cannot have such 
a supply unless men of letters are liberally remu- 

SOnerated; and the least objectionable way of remu- 
nerating them is by means of copyright. You cannot 
depend for literary instruction and amusement on 
the leisure of men occupied in the pursuits of active 
life. Such men may occasionally produce com- 

35 positions of great merit. But you must not look to 
such men for works which require deep meditation 



COPYRIGHT 7 

and long research. Works of that kind you can 
expect only from persons who make literature the 
business of their lives. Of these persons few will be 
found among the rich and the noble. The rich and 
the noble are not impelled to intellectual exertion by 5 
necessity. They may be impelled to intellectual 
exertion by the desire of distinguishing themselves, 
or by the desire of benefiting the community. But 
it is generally within these walls that they seek to 
signalize themselves and to serve their fellow crea-10 
tures. Both their ambition and their public spirit, 
in a country like this, naturally take a political turn. 
It is then on men whose profession is literature, and 
whose private means are not ample, that you must 
rely for a supply of valuable books. Such men must 15 
be remunerated for their literary labor. And there 
are only two ways in which they can be remunerated. 
One of those ways is patronage; the other is copy- 
right. 

There have been times in which men of letters 20 
looked, not to the public, but to the government, or 
to a few great men, for the reward of their exertions. 
It was thus in the time of Maecenas and Pollio at 
Rome, of the Medici at Florence, of Lewis the Four- 
teenth in France, of Lord Halifax and Lord Oxford 25 
in this country. Now, Sir, I well know that there 
are cases in which it is fit and graceful, nay, in which 
it is a sacred duty to reward the merits or to relieve 
the distresses of men of genius by the exercise of this 
species of liberality. But these cases are exceptions. 30 
I can conceive no system more fatal to the integrity 
and independence of literary men than one under 
which they should be taught to look for their daily 
bread to the favor of ministers and nobles. I can 
conceive no system more certain to turn those minds 35 
which are formed by nature to be the blessings and 



8 COPYRIGHT 

ornaments of our species into public scandals and 
pests. 

We have, then, only one resource left. We must 
betake ourselves to copyright, be the inconveniences 
5 of copyright what they may. Those inconveniences, 
in truth, are neither few nor small. Copyright is 
monopoty, and produces all the effects which the 
general voice of mankind attributes to monopoly. 
My honorable and learned friend talks very con- 

10 temptuously of those who are led away by the theory 
that monopoly makes things dear. That monopoly 
makes things dear is certainly a theory, as all the 
great truths which have been established by the 
experience of all ages and nations, and which are 

15 taken for granted in all reasonings, may be said to 
be theories. It is a theory in the same sense in which 
it is a theory that day and night follow each other, 
that lead is heavier than water, that bread nourishes, 
that arsenic poisons, that alcohol intoxicates. If, as 

20 my honorable and learned friend seems to think, 
the whole world is in the wrong on this point, if the 
real effect of monopoly is to make articles good and 
cheap, why does he stop short in his career of change? 
Why does he limit the operation of so salutary a 

25 principle to sixty years? Why does he consent to 
anything short of a perpetuity? He told us that in 
consenting to anything short of a perpetuity he was 
making a compromise between extreme right and 
expediency. But if his opinion about monopoly be 

30 correct, extreme right and expediency would coincide. 
Or rather why should we not restore the monopoly of 
the East India trade to the East India Company? 
Why should we not revive all those old monopolies 
which, in Elizabeth's reign, galled our fathers so 

35 severely that, maddened by intolerable wrong, they 
opposed to their sovereign a resistance before which 



COPYRIGHT 9 

her haughty spirit quailed for the first and for the 
last time? Was it the cheapness and excellence of 
commodities that then so violently stirred the indig- 
nation of the English people? I believe, Sir, that I 
may safely take it for granted that the effect of mon- 5 
opoly generally is to make articles scarce, to make 
them dear, and to make them bad. And I may with 
equal safety challenge my honorable friend to find 
out any distinction between copyright and other 
privileges of the same kind; any reason why a mon- 10 
opoly of books should produce an effect directly the 
reverse of that which was produced by the East 
India Company's monopoly of tea, or by Lord Essex's 
monopoly of sweet wines. Thus, then, stands the 
case. It is good that authors should be remuner-15 
ated; and the least exceptionable way of remuner- 
ating them is by a monopoly. Yet monopoly is an 
evil. For the sake of the good we must submit to 
the evil; but the evil ought not to last a day longer 
than is necessary for the purpose of securing the 20 
good. 

Now, I will not affirm, that the existing law is 
perfect, that it exactly hits the point at which the 
monopoly ought to cease; but this I confidently say, 
that 'the existing law is very much nearer that point 25 
than the law proposed by my honorable and learned 
friend. For consider this; the evil effects of the 
monopoly are proportioned to the length of its dura- 
tion. But the good effects for the sake of which we 
bear with the evil effects are by no means propor-30 
tioned to the length of its duration. A monopoly 
of sixty years produces twice as much evil as a mon- 
opoly of thirty years, and thrice as much evil as a 
monopoly of twenty years. But it is by no means 
the fact that a posthumous monopoly of sixty years 35 
gives to r.n author thrice as much pleasure and thrice 



10 COPYRIGHT 

as strong a motive as a posthumous monopoly of 
twenty years. On the contrary, the difference is 
so small as to be hardly perceptible. We all know 
how faintly we are affected by the prospect of very 
5 distant advantages, even when they are advantages 
which we may reasonably hope that we shall our- 
selves enjoy. But an advantage that is to be enjoyed 
more than half a century after we are dead, by some- 
body, we know not by whom, perhaps by someljody 

10 unborn, by somebody utterly unconnected with us, is 
really no motive at all to action. It is very probable, 
that in the course of some generations, land in the 
unexplored and unmapped heart of the Australasian 
continent, will be very valuable. But there is none 

15 of us who would lay down five pounds for a whole 
province in the heart of the Australasian continent. 
We know, that neither we, nor anybody for whom 
we care, will ever receive a farthing of rent from such 
a province. And a man is very little moved by the 

20 thought that in the year 2000 or 2100, somebody who 
claims through him will employ more shepherds than 
Prince Esterhazy, and will have the finest house and 
gallery of pictures at Victoria or Sydney. Now, this 
is the sort of boon which my honorable and learned 

25 friend holds out to authors. Considered as a boon 
to them, it is a mere nullity; but, considered as an 
impost on the public, it is no nullity, but a very 
serious and pernicious reality. I will take an ex- 
ample. Dr. Johnson died fifty-six years ago. If the 

30 law were what my honorable and learned friend 
wishes to make it, somebody would now have the 
monopoly of Dr. Johnson's works. Who that some- 
body would be it is impossible to say; but we may 
venture to guess. I guess, then, that it would have 

35 been some bookseller, who was the assign of another 
bookseller, who was the grandson of a third book- 



COPYRIGHT 11 

seller, who had bought the copja'ight from Black 
Frank, the Doctor's servant and residuary legatee, in 
1785 or 1786. Now, would the knowledge that this 
copyright would exist in 1841 have been a source of 
gratification to Johnson? Would it have stimulated 5 
his exertions? Would it have once drawn him out 
of his bed before noon? Would it have once cheered 
him under a fit of the spleen? W^ould it have in- 
duced him to give us one more allegory, one more life 
of a poet, one more imitation of Juvenal? I firmly 10 
believe not. I firmly believe that a hundred years 
ago, w^hen he was writing our debates for the Gentle- 
man's Magazine, he would very much rather have had 
twopence to buy a plate of shin of beef at a cook's 
shop underground. Considered as a rew^ard to him, 15 
the difference between a twenty years' term and a 
sixty years' term of posthumous copyright would have 
been nothing or next to nothing. But is the difference 
nothing to us? I can buy Rasselas for sixpence; I 
might have had to give five shillings for it. I can buy 20 
the Dictionary, the entire genuine Dictionary, for two 
guineas, perhaps for less; I might have had to give 
five or six guineas for it. Do I grudge this to a man 
like Dr. Johnsoft? Not at all. Show me that the 
prospect of this boon roused him to any vigorous 25 
effort, or sustained his spirits under depressing cir- 
cumstances, and I am quite willing to pay the price 
of such an object, heavy as that price is. But what 
I do complain of is that my circumstances are to 
be worse, and Johnson's none the better; that I am 30 
to give five pounds for what to him was not worth 
a farthing. 

The principle of copyright is this. It is a tax on 
readers for the purpose of giving a bounty to writers. 
The tax is an exceedingly bad one; it is a tax on 35 
one of the most innocent and most salutary of human 



12 COPYRIGHT 

pleasures; and never let us forget, that a tax on 
innocent pleasures is a premium on vicious pleasures. 
I admit, however, the necessity of giving a bounty to 
genius and learning. In order to give such a bounty, 
51 willingly submit even to this severe and burden- 
some tax. Nay, I am ready to increase the tax, if it 
can be shown that by so doing I should proportionally 
increase the bounty. My complaint is, that my 
honorable and learned friend doubles, triples, quad- 

lOruples, the tax, and makes scarcely any perceptible 
addition to the bounty. Why, Sir, what is the 
additional amount of taxation which would have 
been levied on the public for Dr. Johnson's works 
alone, if my honorable and learned friend's bill had 

15 been the law of the land? I have not data sufficient 
to form an opinion. But I am confident that the 
taxation on his Dictionary alone would have amounted 
to many thousands of pounds. In reckoning the 
whole additional sum which the holders of his copy- 

20 rights would have taken out of the pockets of the 
public during the last half century at twenty thousand 
pounds, I feel satisfied that I very greatly underrate 
it. Now, I again say that I think it but fair that we 
should pay twenty thousand pounds' in consideration 

25 of twenty thousand pounds worth of pleasure and 
encouragement received by Dr. Johnson. But I 
think it very hard that we should pay twenty thou- 
sand pounds for what he would not have valued at 
five shillings. 

30 My honorable and learned friend dwells on the 
claims of the posterity of great writers. Undoubtedly, 
Sir, it would be very pleasing to see a descendant of 
Shakespeare living in opulence on the fruits of his 
great ancestor's genius. A house maintained in 

35 splendor by such a patrimony would be a more 
interesting and striking object than Blenheim is to 



COPYRIGHT 13 

us, or than Strathfieldsaye will be to our children. 
But, unhappily, it is scarcely possible that, under any 
system, such a thing can come to pass. My honor- 
able and learned friend does not propose that copy- 
right shall descend to the eldest son, or shall be 5 
bound up by irrevocable entail. It is to be merely 
personal property. It is therefore highly improbable 
that it will descend during sixty years or half that 
term from parent to child. The chance is that more 
people than one will have an interest in it. They 10 
will in all probability sell it and divide the proceeds. 
The price which a bookseller will give for it will bear 
no proportion to the sum which he will afterwards 
draw from the public, if his speculation proves suc- 
cessful. He will give little, if anything, more for a 15 
term of sixty years than for a term of thirty or five 
and twenty. The present value of a distant advan- 
tage is always small; but when there is great room 
to doubt whether a distant advantage will be any 
advantage at all, the present value sinks to almost 20 
nothing. Such is the inconstancy of the public taste 
that no sensible man will venture to pronounce, with 
confidence, what the sale of any book published in 
our days will be in the years between 1890 and 1900. 
The whole fashion of thinking and writing has often 25 
undergone a change in a much shorter period than 
that to which my honorable and learned friend would 
extend posthumous copyright. What would have 
been considered the best literary property in the 
earlier part of Charles the Second's reign? I imagine 30 
Cowley's poems. Overleap sixty years, and you are 
in the generation of which Pope asked, ^' Who now 
reads Cowley? " What works were ever expected 
with more impatience by the public than those of 
Lord Bolingbroke, which appeared, I think, in 1754? 35 
In 1814, no bookseller would have thanked you for 



14 COPYRIGHT 

the copyright of them all, if you had offered it to 
him for nothing. What would Paternoster Row give 
now for the copyright of Hayley's Triumphs of 
Temper, so much admired within the memory of 
5 many people still living? I say, therefore, that, 
from the very nature of literary property, it will 
almost always pass away from an author's family; 
and I say, that the price given for it to the family 
will bear a very small proportion to the tax which the 

10 purchaser, if his speculation turns out well, w^ill in 
the course of a long series of years levy on the public. 
If, Sir, I wished to find a. strong and perfect illus- 
tration of the effects which I anticipate from long 
copyright, I should select, — my honorable and learned 

15 friend will be surprised, — I should select the case 
of Milton's granddaughter. As often as this bill 
has been under discussion, the fate of Milton's grand- 
daughter had been brought forward by the advocates 

• of monopoly. My honorable and learned friend has 

20 repeatedly told the story with great eloquence and 
effect. He has dilated on the sufferings, on the 
abject poverty, of this illfated woman, the last of an 
illustrious race. He tells us that, in the extremity of 
her distress, Garrick gave her a benefit performance of 

25 ''Comus," that Johnson wrote a prologue, and that the 
public contributed some hundreds of pounds. Was it 
fit, he asks, that she should receive, in this eleemosynary 
form, a small portion of what was in truth a debt? 
Why, he asks, instead of obtaining a pittance from 

30 charity, did she not live in comfort and luxury on the 
proceeds of the sale of her ancestor's works? But, 
Sir, will my honorable and learned friend tell me that 
this event, w^hich he has so often and so pathetically 
described, was caused by the shortness of the term 

35 of copyright? Why, at that time, the duration of 
copyright was longer than even he, at present, pro_ 



COPYRIGHT 15 

poses to make it. The monopoly lasted not sixty 
years, but for ever. At the time at which Milton's 
granddaughter asked charity, Milton's works were 
the exclusive property of a bookseller. Within a 
few months of the day on which the benefit was 5 
given at Garrick's theatre, the holder of the eopy- 
right of Paradise Lost, — I think it was Tonson, — 
applied to the Court of Chancery for an injunction 
against a bookseller, who had published a cheap 
edition of the great epic poem, and obtained the in-io 
junction. The representation of Comus was, if I 
remember rightly, in 1750; the injunction in 1752. 
Here, then, is a perfect illustration of the effect of 
long copyright. Milton's works are the property of 
a single publisher. Everybody who wants them must 15 
buy them at Tonson's shop, and at Tonson's price. 
Whoever attempts to undersell Tonson is harassed 
with legal proceedings. Thousands who would gladly 
possess a copy of Paradise Lost, must forego that 
great enjoyment. And what, in the meantime, is the 20 
situation of the only person for whom we can suppose 
that the author, protected at such a cost to the public, 
was at all interested? She is reduced to utter des- 
titution. Milton's works are under a monopoly. Mil- 
ton's granddaughter is starving. The reader is 25 
pillaged; but the writer's family is not enriched. 
Society is taxed doubly. It has to give an exorbi- 
tant price for the poems; and it has at the same time 
to give alms to the only surviving descendant of the 
poet. 30 

But this is not all. I think it right, Sir, to call 
the attention of the House to an evil, which is per- 
haps more to be apprehended when the author's 
copyright remains in the hands of his family, than 
when it is transferred to booksellers. I seriously fear 35 
that, if such a measure as this should be adopted. 



16 COPYRIGHT 

many valuable works will be either totally suppressed 
or grievously mutilated. I can prove that this danger 
is not chimerical; and I am quite certain that, if the 
danger be real, the safeguards which my honorable 
5 and learned friend has devised are altogether nuga- 
tory. That the danger is not chimerical may easily 
be shown. Most of us, I am sure, have known per- 
' sons who, very erroneously as I think, but from the 
best motives, would not choose to reprint Fielding's 

10 novels, or Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall 
of the Roman Empire. Some gentlemen may per- 
haps be of opinion, that it would be as well if Tom 
Jones and Gibbon's History were never reprinted. 
I will not, then, dwell on these or similar cases. I 

15 will take cases respecting which it is not likely that 
there will be any difference of opinion here; cases, 
too, in which the danger of which I now speak is not 
matter of supposition, but matter of fact. Take 
Richardson's novels. Whatever I may, on the pres- 

20ent occasion, think of my honorable and learned 
friend's judgment as a legislator, I must always 
respect his judgment as a critic. He will, I am sure, 
say that Richardson's novels are among the most 
valuable, among the most original works in our 

25 language. No writings have done more to raise the 
fame of English genius in foreign countries. No 
writings are more deeply pathetic. No writings, 
those of Shakespeare excepted, show more profound 
knowledge of the human heart. As to their moral 

30 tendency, I can cite the most respectable testimony. 
Dr. Johnson describes Richardson as one who had 
taught the passions to move at the command of virtue. 
My dear and honored friend, Mr. Wilberforce, in 
his celebrated religious treatise, when speaking of 

35 the unchristian tendency of the fashionable novels 
of the eighteenth century, distinctly excepts Rich- 



COPYRIGHT 17 

ardson from the censure. Another excellent person 
whom I can never mention without respect and 
kindness, Mrs. Hannah More, often declared in con- 
versation, and has declared in one of her published 
poems, that she first learned from the writings of 5 
Richardson those principles of piety by which her 
life was guided. I may safely say the books cele- 
brated as works of art through the whole civilized 
world, and praised for their moral tendency by Dr. 
Johnson, by Mr. Wilberforce, by Mrs. Hannah More, 10 
ought not to be suppressed. Sir, it is my firm belief, 
that if the law had been what my honorable and 
learned friend proposes to make it, they would have 
been suppressed. I remember Richardson's grand- 
son well; he was a clergyman in the city of London; 15 
he was a most upright and excellent man: but he 
had conceived a strong prejudice against works of 
fiction. He thought all novel-reading not only friv- 
olous but sinful. He said, — this I state on the author- 
ity of one of his clerical brethren who is now a bishop, 20 
— he said that he had never thought it right to read 
one of his grandfather's books. Suppose, Sir, that 
the law had been what my honorable and learned 
friend would make it. Suppose that the copyright 
of Richardson's novels had descended, as might 25 
well have been the case, to this gentleman. I firmly 
believe, that he would have thought it sinful to give 
them a wide circulation. I firmly believe, that he 
would not for a hundred thousand pounds have 
deliberately done what he thought sinful. He would 30 
not have reprinted them. And w^hat protection 
does my honorable and learned friend give to the 
public in such a case? Why, Sir, what he proposes 
is this: if a book is not reprinted during five years, 
any person who wishes -to reprint it may give notice 35 
in the London Gazette: the advertisement must be 



18 COPYRIGHT 

repeated three times: a year must elapse; and then, 
if the proprietor of the copyright does not put forth 
a new edition, he loses his exclusive privilege. Now, 
what protection is this to the public? What is a 
5 new edition? Does the law define the number of 
copies that make an edition? Does it limit the 
price of a copy? Are twelve copies on large paper, 
charged at thirty guineas each, an edition? It has 
been usual, when monopolies have been granted, to 

10 prescribe numbers and to limit prices. But I do 
not find that my honorable and learned friend pro- 
poses to do so in the present case. And, without 
some such provision, the security which he offers is 
manifestly illusory. It is my conviction, that under 

15 such a system as that which he recommends to us, 
a copy of Clarissa would have been as rare as an Aldus 
or a Caxton. 

I will give another instance. One of the most 
instructive, interesting, and delightful books in our 

20 language is Boswell's Life of Johnson. Now it is 
well known that Boswell's eldest son considered this 
book, considered the whole relation of Boswell to 
Johnson, as a blot in the escutcheon of the family. 
He thought, not perhaps altogether without reason, 

25 that his father had exhibited himself in a ludicrous 
and degrading light. And thus he became so sore 
and irritable that at last he could not bear to hear 
the Life of Johnson mentioned. Suppose that the 
law had been what my honorable and learned friend 

30 wishes to make it. Suppose that the copyright of 
Boswell's Life of Johnson had belonged, as it well 
might, during sixty years, to Boswell's eldest son. 
What would have been the consequence? An un- 
adulterated copy of the finest biographical work in 

35 the world would have been as scarce as the first edition 
of Camden's Britannia. 



COPYRIGHT 19 

These are strong cases. I have shown you that, if 
the law had been what you are now going to make 
it, the finest prose work of fiction in the language, the 
finest biographical work in the language, would very 
probably have been suppressed. But I have stated 5 
my case weakly. The books which I have mentioned 
are singularly inoffensive books, books not touching 
on any of those questions which drive even wise men 
beyond the bounds of wisdom. There are books of 
a very different kind, books which are the rallying 10 
points of great political and religious parties. What 
is likely to happen if the copyright of one of these 
books should by descent or transfer come into the 
possession of some hostile zealot? I will take a single 
instance. It is only fifty years since John Wesley 15 
died; and all his works, if the law had been what 
my honorable and learned friend wishes to make 
it, would now have been the property of some person 
or other. The sect founded by Wesley is the most 
numerous, the wealthiest, the most powerful, the 20 
most zealous of sects. In every parliamentary 
election it is a matter of the greatest importance to 
obtain the support of the Wesleyan Methodists. 
Their numerical strength is reckoned by hundreds of 
thousands. They hold the memory of their founder 25 
in the greatest reverence; and not without reason, 
for he was unquestionably a great and a good man. 
To his authority they constantly appeal. His works 
are in their eyes of the highest value. His doctrinal 
writings they regard as containing the best system of 30 
theology ever deduced from Scripture. His journals, 
interesting even to the common reader, are peculiarly 
interesting to the Methodist: for they contain the 
whole history of that singular polity which, weak and 
despised in its beginning, is now, after the lapse of ass 
century, so strong, so flourishing, and so formidable. 



20 COPYRIGHT 

The hymns to which he gave his Imprimatur are a 
most important part of the public worship of his 
followers. Now, suppose that the copyright of these 
works should belong to some person who holds the 
5 memory of Wesley and the doctrines and discipline 
of the Methodists in abhorrence. There are many 
such persons. The Ecclesiastical Courts are at this 
very time sitting on the case of a clergyman of the 
Established Church who refused Christian burial to 

10 a child baptized by a Methodist preacher. I took up 
the other day a work which is considered as among 
the most respectable organs of a large and growing 
party in the Church of England, and there I saw 
John Wesley designated as a forsworn priest. Sup- 

15 pose that the works of Wesley were suppressed. 
Why, Sir, such a grievance would be enough to shake 
the foundations of Government. Let gentlemen who 
are attached to the Church reflect for a moment 
what their feelings would be if the Book of Common 

20 Prayer were not to be reprinted for thirty or forty 
years, if the price of a Book of Common Prayer were 
run up to five or ten guineas. And then let them 
determine whether they will pass a law under which 
it is possible, under which it is probable, that so in- 

25 tolerable a wrong may be done to some sect consisting 
perhaps of half a million of persons. 

I am so sensible, Sir, of the kindness with which 
the House has listened to me, that I will not detain 
you longer. I will only say this, that if the measure 

30 before us should pass, and should produce one-tenth 
part of the evil which it is calculated to produce, and 
which I fully expect it to produce, there will soon be 
a remedy, though of a very objectionable kind. Just 
as the absurd acts which prohibited the sale of game 

35 were virtually repealed by the poacher, just as many 
absurd revenue acts have been virtually repealed by 



COPYRIGHT 21 

the smuggler, so will this law be virtually repealed by 
piratical booksellers. At present the holder of copy- 
right has the public feeling on his side. Those who 
invade copyright are regarded as knaves who take 
the bread out of the mouths of deserving men. Every- 5 
body is well pleased to see them restrained by the 
law, and compelled to refund their ill-gotten gains. 
No tradesmen of good repute will have anything 
to do with such disgraceful transactions. Pass this 
law: and that feeling is at an end. Men very dif-10 
ferent from the present race of piratical booksellers 
will soon infringe this intolerable monopoly. Great 
masses of capital will be constantly employed in 
the violation of the law. Every art will be employed 
to evade legal pursuit; and the whole nation will be 15 
in the plot. On which side indeed should the public 
sympathy be when the question is whether some book 
as popular as Robinson Crusoe, or the Pilgrim's Prog- 
ress, shall be in every cottage, or whether it shall be 
confined to the libraries of the rich for the advantage 20 
of the great-grandson of a bookseller who, a hundred 
years before, drove a hard bargain for the copyright 
with the author when in great distress? Remember 
too that, when once it ceases to be considered as 
wrong and discreditable to invade literary property, 25 
no person can say where the invasion will stop. The 
public seldom makes nice distinctions. The whole- 
some copyright which now exists will share in the 
disgrace and danger of the new copyright which you 
are about to create. And you will find that, in at- 30 
tempting to impose unreasonable restraints on the 
reprinting of the works of the dead, you have, to a 
great extent, annulled those restraints which now 
prevent men from pillaging and defrauding the living. 
If I saw. Sir, any probability that this bill could be so 35 
amended in the Committee that mry objections might 



22 COPYRIGHT 

be removed, I would not divide the House in this 
stage. But I am so fully convinced that no alter- 
ation which would not seem insupportable to my 
honorable and learned friend, could render his measure 
5 supportable to me, that I must move, though with 
regret, that this bill be read a second time this day 
six months. 



THE SECOND SPEECH ON COPYRIGHT 

Delivered in the House of Commons 
April 6th, 1842 



I HAVE been amused and gratified by the remarks 
which my noble friend has made on the arguments 
by which I prevailed on the last House of Commons 
to reject the bill introduced by a very able and ac- 
complished man, Mr. Serjeant Talfourd. My noble 5 
friend has done me a high and rare honor. For 
this is, I believe, the first occasion on which a speech 
made in one Parliament has been answered in an- 
other. I should not find it difficult to vindicate the 
soundness of the reasons which I formerly urged; 10 
to set them in a clearer light, and to fortify them by 
additional facts. But it seems to me that we had 
better discuss the bill which is now on our table than 
the bill which was there fourteen months ago. Glad 
I am to find that there is a very wide difference be- 15 
tween the two bills, and that my noble friend, though 
he has tried to refute my arguments, has acted as 
if he had been convinced by them. • I objected to 
the term of sixty years as far too long. My noble 
friend has cut that term down to twenty-five years. 20 
I warned the House that, under the provisions of 
Mr. Serjeant Talfourd' s bill, valuable works might 
not improbably be suppressed by the representatives 
of authors. My noble friend has prepared a clause 

23 



24 COPYRIGHT 

which, as he thinks, will guard against that danger. 
I will not therefore waste the time of the Committee 
by debating points which he has conceded, but will 
proceed at once to the proper business of this even- 
Sing. 

Sir, I have no objection to the principle of my 
noble friend's bill. Indeed, I had no objection to 
the principle of the bill of last year. I have long 
thought that the term of copyright ought to be ex- 

10 tended. When Mr. Serjeant Talfourd moved for 
leave to bring in his bill, I did not oppose the motion. 
Indeed I meant to vote for the second reading, and 
to reserve what I had to say for the Committee. But 
the learned Serjeant left me no choice. He, in strong 

15 language, begged that nobody who was disposed to 
reduce the term of sixty years would divide with 
him. '' Do not," he said, '' give me your support if 
all that you mean to grant to men of letters is a 
miserable addition of fourteen or fifteen years to the 

20 present term. I do not wish for such support. I 
despise it." Not wishing to obtrude on the learned 
Serjeant a support which he despised, I had no course 
left but to take the sense of the House on the second 
reading. The circumstances are now different. My 

25 noble friend's bill is not at present a good bill; but 
it may be improved into a very good bill; nor will 
he, I am persuaded, withdraw it if it should be so 
improved. He and I have the same object in view 
but we differ as to the best mode of attaining that 

30 object. We are equally desirous to extend the pro- 
tection now enjoyed by writers. In what wa}^ it 
may be extended with most benefit to them and with 
least inconvenience to the public, is the question. 
The present state of the law is this. The author 

35 of a work has a certain copyright in that work for a 
term of twenty-eight years. If he should live more 



COPYRIGHT 25 

than twenty-eight years after the publication of the 
work, he retains the copyright to the end of his life. 

My noble friend does not propose to make any 
addition to the term of twenty-eight years. But he 
proposes that the copyright shall last twenty-five 5 
years after the author's death. Thus my noble 
friend makes no addition to that term which is cer- 
tain, but makes a very large addition to that term 
which is uncertain. 

My plan is different. I would make no addition 10 
to the uncertain term; but I would make a large 
addition to the certain term. I propose to add four- 
teen years to the twenty-eight years which the law 
now allows to an author. Plis copyright w411, in this 
way, last till his death, or till the expiration of forty- 15 
two 3^ears, whichever shall first happen. And I think 
that I shall be able to prove to the satisfaction of the 
Committee that my plan will be more beneficial to 
literature and to literary men than the plan of my 
noble friend. 20 

It must surely. Sir, be admitted that the protec- 
tion w^hich we give to books ought to be distributed 
as evenly as possible, that every book should have a 
fair share of that protection, and no book more than 
a fair share. It would evidently be absurd to put 25 
tickets into a wheel, with different numbers marked 
upon them, and to make writers draw, one a term of 
twenty-eight years, another a term of fifty, another a 
term of ninety. And yet this sort of lottery is what 
my noble friend proposes to establish. I know that 30 
we cannot altogether exclude chance. You have tw^o 
terms of copyright; one certain, the other uncertain; 
and we cannot, I admit, get rid of the uncertain term. 
It is proper, no doubt, that an author's copyright 
should last during his life. But, Sir, though we can- 35 
not altogether exclude chance, we can very much 



26 COPYRIGHT 

diminish the share which chance must have in distri- 
buting the recompense which we wish to give to 
genius and learning. By every addition which we 
make to the certain term we diminish the influence 
5 of chance; by every addition which we make to the 
uncertain term we increase the influence of chance. 
I shall make myself best understood by putting cases. 
Take two eminent female writers, who died within 
our own memory, Madame D'Arblay and Miss Austen. 

10 As the law now stands. Miss Austen's charming 
novels would have only from twenty-eight to thirty- 
three years of copyright. For that extraordinary 
woman died young: she died before her genius was 
fully appreciated by the world. Madame D'Arblay 

15 outlived the whole generation to which she belonged. 
The copyright of her celebrated novel, Evelina, 
lasted, under the present law, sixty-two years. Surely 
this inequality is sufficiently great, sixty-two years 
of copyright for Evelina, only twenty-eight for Per- 

20 suasion. But to my noble friend this inequality 
seems not great enough. He proposes to add twenty- 
five years to Madame D'Arblay's term, and not a 
single day to Miss Austen's term. He would give 
to Persuasion a copyright of only twenty-eight years, 

25 as at present, and to Evelina a copyright more than 
three times as long, a copyright of eighty-seven 
years. Now, is this reasonable? See, on the other 
hand, the operation of my plan. I make no addition 
at all to Madame D'Arblay's term of sixty-two years, 

30 which is, in my opinion, quite long enough; but I 
extend Miss Austen's term to forty-two years, which 
is, in my opinion, not too much. You see. Sir, that 
at present chance has too much sway in this matter; 
that at present the protection which the state gives 

35 to letters is very unequally given. You see that 
if my noble friend's plan be adopted, more will be left 



COPYRIGHT 27 

to chance than under the present system, and you 
will have such inequalities as are unknown under 
the present system. You see also that, under the 
system which I recommend, we shall have, not per- 
fect certainty, not perfect equality, but much less 5 
uncertainty and inequality than at present. 

But this is not all. My noble friend's plan is not 
merely to institute a lottery in which some writers will 
draw prizes and some will draw blanks. It is much 
worse than this. His lottery is so contrived that, in 10 
the vast majority of cases, the blanks will fall to the 
best books, and the prizes to books of inferior merit. 

Take Shakespeare. My noble friend gives a longer 
protection than I should give to Love's Labour's Lost, 
and Pericles, Prince of Tyre; but he gives a shorter 15 
protection than I should give to Othello and Macbeth. 

Take Milton. Milton died in 1674. The copy- 
rights of Milton's great works would, according to my 
noble friend's plan, expire in 1699. Comus appeared 
in 1634, the Paradise Lost in 1668. To Comus, then, 20 
my noble friend would give sixty-five years of copy- 
right, and to the Paradise Lost only thirty-one years. 
Is that reasonable? Comus is a noble poem: but 
who would rank it with the Paradise Lost? My plan 
would give forty-two years both to the Paradise Lost 25, 
and to Comus. 

Let us pass on from Milton to Dryden. My noble 
friend would give more than sixty years of copy- 
right to Dryden's worst works; to the encomiastic 
verses on Oliver Cromwell, to the Wild Gallant, to 30 
the Rival Ladies, to other wretched pieces as bad 
as any thing written by Flecknoe or Settle: but for 
Theodore and Honoria, for Tancred and Sigismunda 
for Cimon and Iphigenia, for Palamon and Arcite, 
for Alexander's Feast, my noble friend thinks a copy- 35 
right of twenty-eight years sufficient. Of all Pope's 



28 COPYRIGHT 

works, that to which my noble friend would give the 
largest measure of protection is the volume of Pas- 
torals, remarkable only as the production of a boy. 
Johnson's first work was a Translation of a Book of 
5 Travels in Abyssinia, published in 1735. It was so 
poorly executed that in his later years he did not like 
to hear it mentioned. Boswell once picked up a copy 
of it, and told his friend that he had done so. " Do 
not talk about it," said Johnson: '^ it is a thing to 

10 be forgotten." To this performance my noble friend 
would give protection during the enormous term 
of seventy-five years. To the Lives of the Poets 
he would give protection during about thirty years. 
Well; take Henry Fielding; it matters not whom 

15 1 take, but take Fielding. His early works are read 
only by the curious, and would not be read even by 
the curious, but for the fame which he acquired in 
the later part of his life by w^orks of a very different 
kind. What is the value of the Temple Beau, of 

20 the Intriguing Chambermaid, of half a dozen other 
plays of which few gentlemen have even heard the 
names? Yet to these worthless pieces my noble 
friend would give a term of copyright longer by more 
than twenty years than that which he would give to 

25 Tom Jones and Amelia. 

Go on to Burke. His little tract, entitled The 
Vindication of Natural Society, is certainly not with- 
out merit; but it would not be remembered in our 
days if it did not bear the name of Burke. To this 

30 tract my noble friend would give a copyright of near 
seventy years. But to the great work on the French 
Revolution, to the Appeal from the New to the Old 
Whigs, to the letters on the Regicide Peace, he would 
give a copyright of thirty years or little more. 

35 And, Sir, observe that I am not selecting here 
and there extraordinary instances in order to make 



COPYRIGHT 29 

up the semblance of a case. I am taking the greatest 
names of our literature in chronological order. Go 
to other nations; go to remote ages; you will still 
find the general rule the same. There was no copy- 
right at Athens or Rome; but the history of the 5 
Greek and Latin literature illustrates my argument 
quite as well as if copyright had existed in ancient 
times. Of all the plays of Sophocles, the one to 
which the plan of my noble friend would have given 
the most scanty recompense would have been that 10 
wonderful masterpiece, the ffidipus at Colonos. Who 
w^ould class together the Speech of Demosthenes 
against his Guardians, and the Speech for the Crown? 
My noble friend, indeed, would not class them to- 
gether. For to the Speech against the Guardians he 15 
would give a copyright of near seventy years; and 
to the incomparable Speech for the Crown a copy- 
right of less than half that length. Go to Rome. 
My noble friend would give more than twice as long 
a term to Cicero's juvenile declamation in defence of 20 
Roscius Amerinus as to the Second Philippic. Go 
to France; my noble friend would give a far longer 
term to Racine's Freres Ennemis than to Athalie, 
and to Moliere's Etourdi than to Tartuffe. Go to 
Spain. My noble friend w^ould give a longer term to 25 
forgotten works of Cervantes, works which nobody 
now reads, than to Don Quixote. Go to Germany. 
According to my noble friend's plan, of all the works 
of Schiller the Robbers would be the most favored: 
of all the works of Goethe, the Sorrows of WertherSO 
would be the most favored. I thank the Committee 
for listening so kindly to this long enumeration. 
Gentlemen will perceive, I am sure, that it is not 
from pedantry that I mention the names of so many 
books and authors. But just as, in our debates on 35 
civil affairs, we constantly draw illustrations from 



30 COPYRIGHT 

civil history, we must, in a debate about literary 
property, draw our illustrations from literary history. 
Now, Sir, I have, I think, shown from literary history 
that the effect of my noble friend's plan would be to 

5 give to crude and imperfect w^orks, to third-rate and 
fourth-rate works, a great advantage over the highest 
{productions of genius. It is impossible to account 
for the facts which I have laid before you by attrib- 
uting them to mere accident. Their number is too 

10 great, their character too uniform. We must seek for 

some other explanation; and we shall easily find one. 

It is the law of our nature that the mind shall 

attain its full power by slow degrees; and this is 

especially true of the most vigorous minds. Young 

15 men, no doubt, have often produced works of great 
merit; but it would be impossible to name any writer 
of the first order whose juvenile performances were 
his best. That all the most valuable books of history, 
of philology, of physical and metaphysical science, 

20 of divinity, of political economy, have been produced 
by men of mature years, will hardly be disputed. 

The case may not be quite so clear as respects 
works of the imagination. And yet T know no work 
of the imagination of the very highest class that was 

25 ever, in any age or country, produced by a man 
under thirty-five. Whatever powers a youth may 
have received from nature, it is impossible that his 
taste and judgment can be ripe, that his mind can be 
richly stored with images, that he can have observed 

30 the vicissitudes of life, that he can have studied the 
nicer shades of character. How, as Marmontel very 
sensibly said, is a person to paint portraits who has 
never seen faces? On the whole I believe that I maj^, 
without fear of contradiction, affirm this, that of 

35 the good books now extant in the world more than 
nineteen twentieths were published after the writers 



COPYRIGHT 31 

had attained the age of forty. If this be so, it is 
evident that the plan of my noble friend is framed 
on a vicious principle. For, while he gives to juvenile 
productions a very much larger protection than they 
now enjoy, he does comparatively little for the works 5 
of men in the full maturity of their powers, and ab- 
solutely nothing for any work which is published 
during the last three years of the life of the writer. 
For, by the existing law, the copyright of such a 
work lasts twenty-eight years from the publication; 10 
and my noble friend gives only twenty-five years to 
be reckoned from the writer's death. 

What I recommend is, that the certain term, rec- 
koned from the date of publication, shall be forty- 
two years instead of twenty-eight years. In this 15 
arrangement there is no uncertainty, no inequality. 
The advantage which I propose to give will be the 
same to every book. No work will have so long a 
copyright as my noble friend gives to some books, 
or so short a copyright as he gives to others. No 20 
copyright will last ninety years. No copyright will 
end in twenty-eight years. To every book published 
in the course of the last seventeen years of a writer's 
life I give a longer term of copyright than my noble 
friend gives; and I am confident that no person 25 
versed in literary history will deny this, — that in 
general the most valuable works of an author are 
published in the course of the last seventeen years 
of his life. I wall rapidly enumerate a few, and but 
a few, of the great works of English w^'iters to which 30 
my plan is more favorable than my noble friend's 
plan. To Lear, to Macbeth, to Othello, to the Fairy 
Queen, to the Paradise Lost, to Bacon's Novum 
Organum and De Augmentis, to Locke's Essay on 
the Human Understanding, to Clarendon's History, 35 
to Hume's History, to Gibbon's History, to Smith's 



32 COPYRIGHT 

Wealth of Nations, to Addison's Spectators, to almost 
all the great works of Burke, to Clarissa and Sir 
Charles Grandison, to Joseph Andrews, Tom Jones, 
and Amelia, and, with the single exception of Waverley 
5 to all the novels of Sir Walter Scott, I give a longer 
term of copyright than my noble friend gives. Can 
he match that list? Does not that list contain what 
England has produced greatest in many various 
ways, poetry, philosophy, history, eloquence, wit, 

10 skilful portraiture of life and manners? I confi- 
dently, therefore, call on the Committee to take my 
plan in preferencje to the plan of my noble friend. I 
have shown that the protection which he proposes to 
give to letters is unequal, and unequal in the worst 

15 way. I have shown that his plan is to give protec- 
tion to books in inverse proportion to their merit. I 
shall move when we come to the third clause of the 
bill to omit the words " twenty-five years," and in a 
subsequent part of the same clause I shall move to 

20 substitute for the words 'twenty-eight years" the 
words " forty-two years." I earnestly hope that the 
Committee will adopt these amendments; and I feel 
the firmest conviction that my noble friend's bill, so 
amended, will confer a great boon on men of letters 

25 with the smallest possible inconvenience to the public. 



LINCOLN'S 
ADDRESS AT COOPER UNION 



THE COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS 

Monday, February 27, 1860 

[This address, Lincoln's first important direct message to the 
people of the East, was very carefully prepared. The text is 
taken from The Tribune Tract, issued as a campaign document. 
Another version, revised by Lincoln, was published also for cam- 
paign distribution in September, 1860. It differs only in slight 
details from our text.] 



Mr. President and Fellow-Citizens of New York: 
The facts with which I shall deal this evening are 
mainly old and familiar; nor is there anything new 
in the general use I shall make of them. If there shall 
be any novelty, it will be in the mode of presenting the 5 
facts, and the inferences and observations following 
that presentation. 

In his speech last autumn, at Columbus, Ohio, as 
reported in the New York Times, Senator Douglas 
said: 10 

Our fathers, when they framed the Government under 
which we live, understood this question just as well, and even 
better, than we do now. 

I fully indorse this, and I adopt it as a text for this 
discourse. I so adopt it because it furnishes a precise 15 
and agreed starting point for a discussion between 
Republicans and that wing of the Democracy headed 
by Senator Douglas. It simply leaves the inquiry: 

35 



36 THE COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS 

*' What was the understanding those fathers had of the 
question mentioned?" 

What is the frame of Government under which we 
live? 
5 The answer must be, "The Constitution of the 
United States." That Constitution consists of the 
original, framed in 1787 (and under which the present 
Government first went into operation), and twelve 
subsequently framed amendments, the first ten of 

10 which were framed in 1789. 

Who were our fathers that framed the Constitution? 
I suppose the "thirty-nine" who signed the original 
instrument may be fairly called our fathers who framed 
that part of the present Government. It is almost 

15 exactly true to say they framed it, and it is altogether 
true to say they fairly represented the opinion and 
sentiment of the whole nation at that time. Their 
names, being familiar to nearly all, and accessible to 
quite all, need not now be repeated. 

20 I take these "thirty-nine," for the present, as being 
" our fathers who framed the Government under which 
we live." 

What is the question which, according to the text, 
those fathers understood "just as well, and even 

25 better, than we do now?" 

It is this: Does the proper division of local from 
Federal authority, or anything in the Constitution, for- 
bid our Federal Government to control as to slavery 
in our Federal Territories? 

SO Upon this. Senator Douglas holds the affirmative, 
and Republicans the negative. This affirmation and 
denial form an issue; and this issue — this question — 
is precisely what the text declares our fathers under- 
stood "better than we." 

35 Let us now inquire whether the "thirty-nine," or 
any of them, ever acted upon this question; and if 



THE COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS 37 

they did, how they acted upon it — how they ex- 
pressed that better understanding. 

In 1784, three years before the Constitution, the 
United States then owning the Northwestern Terri- 
tory, and no other, the Congress of the Confederation 5 
had before them the question of prohibiting slavery 
in that Territory; and four of the "thirty-nine" who 
afterward framed the Constitution were in that Con- 
gress, and voted on that question. Of these, Roger 
Sherman, Thomas Mifflin, and Hugh WiUiamson voted 10 
for the prohibition, thus showing that, in their under- 
standing, no hne dividing local from Federal authority, 
nor anything else, properly forbade the Federal Gov- 
ernment to control as to slavery in Federal territory. 
The other of the four — James McHenry — voted against 15 
the prohibition, showing that for some cause he thought 
it improper to vote for it. 

In 17S7, still before the Constitution, but while the 
Convention was in session framing it, and while the 
Northwestern Territory still was the only territory 20 
owned by the United States, the same question of pro- 
hibiting slavery in the Territory again came before the 
Congress of the Confederation; and three more of the 
"thirty-nine" who afterward signed the Constitution 
were in that Congress, and voted on the question. 25 
They were William Blount, William Few, and Abraham 
Baldwin; and they all voted for the prohibition — thus 
showing that, in their understanding, no line dividing 
local from Federal authority, nor anything else, properly 
forbade the Federal Government to control as to 30 
slavery in Federal territory. This time the prohibi- 
tion became a law, being part of what is now well 
known as the Ordinance of '87. 

The question of Federal control of slavery in the 
Territories seems not to have been directly before the 35 
convention which framed the original Constitution; 



38 THE COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS 

and hence it is not recorded that the "thirty-nine/' 
or any of them, while engaged on that instrument, 
expressed any opinion on that precise question. 
In 1789, by the first Congress which sat under the 
5 Constitution, an act was passed to enforce the Ordi- 
nance of '87, inchiding the prohibition of slavery in 
the Northwestern Territory. The bill for this act was 
reported by one of the ''thirty-nine," Thomas Fitz- 
simmons, then a member of the House of Represent a- 

lOtives from Pennsylvania. It went through all its 
stages without a word of opposition, and finally passed 
both branches without ayes and nays, which is equiv- 
alent to an unanimous passage. In this Congress 
there were sixteen of the "thirty-nine" fathers who 

15 framed the original Constitution. They were John 
Langdon, Nicholas Oilman, Wm. S. Johnson, Roger 
Sherman, Robert Morris, Thos. Fitzsimmons, William 
Few, Abraham Baldwin, Rufus King, WilHam Patter- 
son, Oeorge Clymer, Richard Bassett, Oeorge Read, 

20 Pierce Butler, Daniel Carroll, and James Madison. 

This shows that, in their understanding, no line di- 
viding local from Federal authority, nor anything in 
the Constitution, properly forbade Congress to pro- 
hibit slavery in the Federal territory; else both their 

25 fidelity to correct principle, and their oath to support 
the Constitution, would have constrained them to op- 
pose the prohibition. 

Again, Oeorge Washington, another of the "thirty- 
nine," was then President of the United States, and 

30 as such, approved and signed the bill, thus completing 
its validity as a law, and thus showing that, in his 
understanding, no line dividing local from Federal 
authority, nor anything in the Constitution, forbade 
the Federal Oovernment to control as to slavery in 

35 Federal territory. 

No great while after the adoption of the original 



THE COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS 39 

Constitution, North Carolina ceded to the Federal 
Government the country now constituting the State of 
Tennessee; and a few years later Georgia ceded that 
which now constitutes the States of Mississippi and 
Alabama. In both deeds of cession it was made a con- 5 
dition by the ceding States that the Federal Govern- 
ment should not prohibit slavery in the ceded country. 
Besides this, slavery was then actually in the ceded 
country. Under these circumstances, Congress, on 
taking charge of these countries, did not absolutely 10 
prohibit slavery within them. But they did interfere 
with it — take control of it — even there, to a certain 
extent. In 1798, Congress organized the Territory of 
Mississippi. In the act of organization they prohibited 
the bringing of slaves into the Territory from any 15 
place without the United States, by fine, and giving 
freedom to slaves so brought. This act passed both 
branches of Congress without yeas and nays. In that 
Congress were three of the "thirty-nine'' who framed 
the original Constitution. They w^ere John Langdon,20 
George Read, and Abraham Baldwin. They all prob- 
ably voted for it. Certainly they would have placed 
their opposition to it upon record if, in their under- 
standing, any line dividing local from Federal author- 
ity, or anything in the Constitution, properly forbade 25 
the Federal Government to control as to slavery in 
Federal territory. 

In 1803, the Federal Government purchased the 
Louisiana country. Our former territorial acquisi- 
tions came from certain of our own States; but this 30 
Louisiana country was acquired from a foreign nation. 
In 1804, Congress gave a territorial organization to 
that part of it which now constitutes the State of 
Louisiana. New Orleans, lying within that part, was 
an old and comparatively large city. There were 35 
other considerable towns and settlements, and slavery 



40 THE COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS 

was extensively and thoroughly intermingled with the 
people. Congress did not, in the Territorial Act, 
prohibit slavery; but they did interfere with it — take 
control of it — in a more marked and extensive way 
5 than they did in the case of Mississippi. The sub- 
stance of the provision therein made in relation to 
slaves was: 

First. That no slave should be imported into the 
Territory from foreign parts. 

10 Second. That no slave should be carried into it who 
had been imported into the United States since the 
first day of May, 1798. 

Third. That no slave should be carried into it, 
except by the owner, and for his own use as a settler; 

15 the penalty in all the cases being a fine upon the 
violater of the law, and freedom to the slave. 

This act also was passed without ayes and nays. 
In the Congress which passed it there were two of 
the "thirty-nine." They were Abraham Baldwin and 

20 Jonathan Dayton. As stated in the case of Mississippi, 
it is probable they both voted for it. They would not 
have allowed it to pass without recording their oppo- 
sition to it if, in their understanding, it violated either 
the line properly dividing local from Federal author- 

25 ity, or any provision of the Constitution. 

In 1819-20 came and passed the Missouri question. 
Many votes w^ere taken, by yeas and nays, in both 
branches of Congress, upon the various phases of the 
general question. Two of the "thirty-nine" — Rufus 

30 King and Charles Pinckney — were members of that 
Congress. Mr. King steadily voted for slavery prohi- 
bition and against all compromises, while Mr. Pinck- 
ney as steadily voted against slavery prohibition and 
against all compromises. By this, Mr. King showed 

35 that, in his understanding, no line dividing local from 
Federal authority, nor anything in the Constitution, 



THE COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS 41 

was violated by Congress prohibiting slavery in Fed- 
eral territory; while Mr. Pinckney, by his votes, 
showed that, in his understanding, there was some 
sufficient reason for opposing such prohibition in that 5 
case. 

The cases I have mentioned are the only acts of the 
*Hhirty-nine/' or of any of them, upon the direct issue, 
which I have been able to discover. 

To enumerate the persons who thus acted as being 10 
four in 1784, three in 1787, seventeen in 1789, three in 
1798, two in 1804, and two in 1819-20, there would be 
thirty of them. But this would be counting John 
Langdon, Roger Sherman, William Few, Rufus King, 
and George Read each twice, and Abraham Baldwin 15 
three times. The true number of those of the "thirty- 
nine" whom I have shown to have acted upon the 
question which, by the text, they understood better 
than we, is twenty-three, leaving sixteen not shown 
to have acted upon it in any way. 20 

Here, then, we have twenty-three out of our " thirty- 
nine" fathers "who framed the government under 
which we live," who have, upon their official re- 
sponsibility and their corporal oaths, acted upon the 
very question which the text affirms they " understood 25 
just as well, and even better, than we do now;" and 
twenty-one of them — a clear majority of the whole 
"th'rty-nine" — so acting upon it as to make them 
guilty of gross political impropriety and wilful per- 
jury if, in their understanding, any proper division 30 
between local and Federal authority, or anything in. 
the Constitution they had made themselves, and 
sworn to support, forbade the Federal Government 
to control as to slavery in the Federal Territories. 
Thus tlie twenty-one acted; and, as actions speak 35 
louder than words, so actions under such responsi- 
bility speak still louder. 



42 TH^ COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS 

Two of the twenty-three voted against Congressional 
prohibition of slavery in the Federal Territories, in the 
instances in which they acted upon the question. But 
for what reasons they so voted is not known. They 
5 niay have done so because they thought a proper 
division of local from Federal authority, or some 
provision or principle of the Constitution, stood in the 
way; or they may, without any such question, have 
voted against the prohibition on what appeared to 

10 them to be sufficient grounds of expediency. No one 
W'ho has sw^orn to support the Constitution can con- 
scientiously vote for what he understands to be an 
unconstitutional measure, however expedient he may 
think it; but one may and ought to vote against a 

15 measure which he deems constitutional if, at the same 
time, he deems it inexpedient. It, therefore, w^ould be 
unsafe to set down even the two who voted against 
the prohibition as having done so because, in their 
understanding, any proper division of local from 

20 Federal authority, or anything in the Constitution, 
forbade the Federal Government to control as to 
slavery in Federal territory. 

The remaining sixteen of the 'Hhirty-nine,'' so far 
as I have discovered, have left no record of their un- 

25 derstanding upon the direct question of Federal con- 
trol of slavery in the Federal Territories. But there 
is much reason to believe that their understanding 
upon that question would not have appeared different 
from that of their twenty-three compeers, had it been 

30 manifested at all. 

For the purpose of adhering rigidly to the text, 1 
have purposely omitted whatever understanding may 
have been manifested by any person, however distin- 
guished, other than the thirty-nine fathers whoYramed 

35 the original Constitution; and, for the same reason, 
I have also omitted whatever understanding may have 



THE COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS 43 

been manifested by any of the "thirty-nine" even on 
any other phase of the general question of slavery. 
If we should look into their acts and declarations on 
those other phases, as the foreign slave-trade, and the 
morality and policy of slavery generally, it would ap- 5 
pear to us that on the direct question of Federal con- 
trol of slavery in Federal Territories, the sixteen, if 
they had acted at all, would probably have acted just 
as the twenty-three did. Among that sixteen were 
several of the most noted anti-slavery men of those 10 
times, — as Dr. Franklin, ' Alexander Hamilton, and 
Gouverneur Morris, — while there was not one now 
known to have been otherwise, unless it may be John 
Rutledge, of South Carolina. 

The sum of the whole is that of our "thirty-nine'- 15 
fathers who framed the original Constitution, twenty- 
one — a clear majority of the whole — certainly under- 
stood that no proper division of local from Federal 
authority, nor any part of the Constitution, forbade 
the Federal Government to control slavery in the Fed- 20 
eral Territories; while all the rest probably had the 
same understanding. Such, unquestionably, was the 
understanding of our fathers who framed the original 
Constitution ; and the text affirms that they understood 
the question "better than Vv^e." 25 

But, so far, I have been considering the understand- 
ing of the question manifested by the framers of the 
original Constitution. In and by the original instru- 
ment, a mode was provided for amending it; and, as I 
have already stated, the present frame of "the govern- 30 
ment under which we live" consists of that original, 
and twelve amendatory articles framed and adopted 
since. Those who now insist that Federal control of 
slavery in Federal Territories violates the Constitu- 
tion, point us to the provisions which they suppose it 35 
thus violates; and, I understand, they all fix upon 



44 THE COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS 

provisions in these amendatory articles, and not in 
the original instrument. The Supreme Court, in the 
Dred Scott case, plant themselves upon the fifth 
amendment, which provides that "no person shall be 
5 deprived of life, liberty, or property without due 
process of law;" while Senator Douglas and his pecu- 
liar adherents plant themselves upon the tenth amend- 
ment, providing that "the powers not delegated to the 
United States by the Constitution are reserved to the 

10 States respectively, or to the people." 

Now, it so happens that these amendments were 
framed by the first Congress which sat under the Con- 
stitution — the identical Congress which passed the act 
already mentioned, enforcing the prohibition of slavery 

15 in the Northwestern Territor}^ Not only was it the 
same Congress, but they were the identical, same indi- 
vidual men who, at the same session, and at the same 
time within the session, had under consideration, and 
in progress toward maturity, these constitutional 

20 amendments, and this act prohibiting slavery in all 
the territory the nation then owned. The constitu- 
tional amendments were introduced before, and passed 
after, the act enforcing the Ordinance of '87; so that, 
during the whole pendency of the act to enforce the 

25 Ordinance, the constitutional amendments were also 
pending. 

That Congress, consisting in all of seventj^-six mem- 
bers, including sixteen of the framers of the original 
Constitution, as before stated, were preeminently our 

30 fathers who framed that part of "the Government 
under which we live,'' which is now claimed as for- 
bidding the Federal Government to control slavery in 
the Federal Territories. 

Is it not a little presumptuous in any one at this 

35 day to affirm that the two things which that Congress 
deliberately framed, and carried to maturity at the 



THE COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS 45 

same time, are absolutely inconsistent with each other? 
And does not such affirmation become impudently- 
absurd when coupled with the other affirmation, from 
the same mouth, that those who did the two things 
alleged to be inconsistent, understood whether they 5 
really were inconsistent better than we — better than 
he who affirms that they are inconsistent? i 

It is surely safe to assume that the thirty-nine 
framers of the original Constitution, and the seventy- 
six members of the Congress which framed the amend- 10 
ments thereto, taken together, do certainly include 
those who may be fairly called ''our fathers who 
framed the government under which we live.'' And 
so assuming, I defy any man to show that any one 
of them ever, in his whole life, declared that, in his 15 
understanding, . any proper division of local from 
Federal authority, or any part of the Constitution, 
forbade the Federal Government to control as to 
slavery in the Federal Territories. I go a step further. 
I defy any one to show that any living man in the 20 
whole world ever did, prior to the beginning of the 
present century (and I might almost say prior to the 
beginning of the last half of the present century), 
declare that, in his understanding, any proper divi- 
sion of local from Federal authority, or any part of 25 
the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government 
to control as to slavery in the Federal Territories. 
To those who now so declare I give not only ''our 
fathers who framed the Government under which 
we live," but with them all other living men within 30 
the century in which it was framed, among whom 
to search, and they shall not be able to find the evi- 
dence of a single man agreeing with them. 

Now, and here let me guard a little against being 
misunderstood. I do not mean to say we are bound 35 
to follow implicitly in whatever our fathers did. To 



46 THE COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS 

do so would be to discard all the lights of current 
experience — to reject all progress, all improvement. 
What I do say is, that if we would supplant the opin- 
ions and policy of our fathers in any case, we should 
5 do so upon evidence so conclusive, and argument so 
clear, that even their great authority, fairly con- 
sidered and weighed, cannot stand; and most surely 
not in a case whereof we ourselves declare they under- 
stood the question better than we. 

10 If any man at this day sincerely believes that a 
proper division of local from Federal authority, or 
any part of the Constitution, forbids the Federal 
Government to control as to slavery in the Federal 
Territories, he is right to say so, and to enforce his 

15 position by all truthful evidence and fair argument 
which he can. But he has no right to mislead others, 
who have less access to history, and less leisure to 
study it, into the false belief that "our fathers who 
framed the Government under which we live" were 

20 of the same opinion — thus substituting falsehood 
and deception for truthful evidence and fair argument. 
If any man at this day sincerely believes "our fathers 
who framed the Government under which we live'* 
used and applied principles, in other cases, which 

25 ought to have led them to understand that a proper 
division of local from Federal authority, or some part 
of the Constitution, forbids the Federal Government 
to control as to slavery in the Federal Territories, 
he is right to say so. But he should, at the same time, 

30 brave the responsibility of declaring that, in his 
opinion, he understands their principles better than 
they did themselves; and especially should he not 
shirk that responsibility by asserting that they " under- 
'stood the question just as well, and even better, than 

35 we do now." 

But enough. Let all who believe that " our fathers 



THE COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS 47 

who framed the government under which we Hve 
understood this question just as well, and even better, 
than we do now," speak as they spoke, and act as they 
acted upon it. This is all Republicans ask — all 
Republicans desire — in relation to slavery. As those 5 
fathers marked it, so let it be again marked, as an 
evil not to be extended, but to be tolerated and pro- 
tected only because of and so far as its actual presence 
among us makes that toleration and protection a 
necessity. Let all the guaranties those fathers gave 10 
it be not grudgingly, but fully and fairly, maintained. 
For this Republicans contend, and with this, so far 
as I know or believe, they will be content. 

And now, if they would listen — as I suppose they 
will not — I would address a few words to the South- 15 
ern people. 

I would say to them: You consider yourselves a 
reasonable and a just people; and I consider that in 
the general qualities of reason and justice you are not 
inferior to any other people. Still, when you speak of 20 
us Republicans, you do so only to denounce us as 
reptiles, or, at the best, as no better than outlaws. 
You will grant a hearing to pirates or murderers, 
but nothing like it to "Black Republicans." In all 
your contentions with one another, each of you deems 25 
an unconditional condemnation of " Black Republican- 
ism" as the first thing to be attended to. Indeed, 
such condemnation of us seems to be an indispensable 
prerequisite — license, so to speak — among you to be 
admitted or permitted to speak at all. 30 

Now, can you, or not, be prevailed upon to pause 
and to consider whether this is quite just to us, or 
even to yourselves? 

Bring forward your charges and specifications, and 
then be patient long enough to hear us deny or justify. 35 

You say we are sectional. We deny it. That 



48 THB COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS 

makes an issue; and the burden of proof is upon you. 
You produce your proof; and what is it? Why, 
that our party has no existence in your section — gets 
no votes in your section. The fact is substantially 
5 true; but does it prove the issue? If it does, then in 
case we should, without change of principle, begin 
to get votes in your section, we should thereby cease 
to be sectional. You cannot escape this conclusion; 
and yet, are you willing to abide by it? If you are, 

10 you will probably soon find that we have ceased to 
be sectional, for we shall get votes in your section 
this very year. You wiU then begin to discover, 
as the truth plainly is, that your proof does not touch 
the issue. The fact that we get no votes in your sec- 

15 tion is a fact of your making, and not of ours. And 
if there be fault in that fact, that fault is primarily 
yours, and remains so until you show that we repel 
you by some wrong principle or practice. If we do 
repel you by any wrong principle or practice, the 

20 fault is ours; but this brings j^ou to where you ought 
to have started — to discussion of the right or wrong 
of our principle. If our principle, put in practice, 
would wrong your section for the benefit of ours, 
or for any other object, then our principle, and we 

25 with it, are sectional, and are justly opposed and 
denounced as such. Meet us, then, on the question 
of whether our principle, put in practice, would 
wrong your section; and so meet us as if it were pos- 
sible that something may be said on our side. Do 

30 you accept the challenge? No? Then you really believe 
that the principle which " our fathers who framed the 
Government under which we live'' thought so clearly 
right as to adopt it, and indorse it again and again, 
upon their official oaths, is in fact so clearly wrong as 

35 to demand your condemnation without a moment's 
consideration. 



THE COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS 49 

Some of you delight to flaunt in our faces the warn- 
ing against sectional parties given by Washington 
in his Farewell Address. Less than eight years before 
Washington gave that warning, he had, as President 
of the United States, approved and signed an act 5 
of Congress enforcing the prohibition of slavery in the 
Northwestern Territory, which act embodied the policy 
of the Government upon that subject up to and at the 
very moment he penned that warning; and about 
one year after he penned it, he wrote Lafayette that 10 
he considered that prohibition a wise measure, ex- 
pressmg in the same connection his hope that we should 
at some time have a confederacy of free States. 

Bearing this in mind, and seeing that sectionalism 
has since arisen upon this same subject, is that warning 15 
a weapon in your hands against us, or in our hands 
against you? Could Washington himself speak, 
would he cast the blame of that sectionalism upon 
us, who sustain his policy, or upon you, who repudiate 
it? We respect that warning of Washington, and we 20 
commend it to you, together with his example point- 
ing to the right application of it. 

But you say you are conservative — eminently 
conservative — while we are revolutionary, destructive, 
or something of the sort. What is conservatism? 25 
Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the 
new and untried? We stick to, contend for, the 
identical old policy on the point in controversy which 
was adopted by "our fathers who framed the Gov- 
ernment under which we live;'' while you with one 30 
accord reject, and scout, and spit upon that old 
policy, and insist upon substituting something new. ] 
True, you disagree among yourselves as to what that 
substitute shall be. You are divided on new proposi- 
tions and plans, but you are unanimous in rejecting 35 
and denouncing the old policy of the fathers. Some 



50 THE COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS 

of you are for reviving the foreign slave-trade; some 
for a congressional slave-code for the Territories; 
some for Congress forbidding the Territories to pro- 
hibit slavery within their limits; some for maintain- 
5ing slavery in the Territories through the judiciary; 
some for the "gur-reat pur-rinciple" that "if one 
man would enslave another, no third man should 
object," fantastically called '^Popular Sovereignty;" 
but never a man among you is in favor of Federal 

10 prohibition of slavery in Federal Territories, accord- 
ing to the practice of "our fathers who framed the 
Government under which we live." Not one of all 
your various plans can show a precedent or an advo- 
cate in the century within which our Government 

15 originated. Consider, then, whether your claim of 
conservatism for yourselves, and your charge of 
destructiveness against us, are based on the most 
clear and stable foundations. 

Again, you say we have made the slavery question 

20 more prominent than it formerly was. We deny it. 
We admit that it is more prominent, but we deny that 
we made it so. It was not we, but you, who dis- 
carded the old policy of the fathers. We resisted, and 
still resist, your innovation; and thence comes the 

25 greater prominence of the question. Would you 
have that question reduced to its former proportions? 
Go back to that old policy. What has been will be 

' again, imder the same conditions. If you would 
have the peace of the old times, readopt the precepts 

30 and policy of the old times. 

You charge that we stir up insurrections among your 
slaves. We deny it; and what is your proof? Har- 
per's Ferry! John Brown! ! John Brown was no 
Republican; and you have failed to implicate a single 

35 Republican in his Harper's Ferry enterprise. If any 
member of our party is guilty in that matter, you 



THE COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS 51 

know it, or you do not know it. If you do know it, 
you are inexcusable for not designating the man and 
proving the fact. If you do not know it, you are 
inexcusable to assert it, and especially to persist in 
the assertion after you have tried and failed to make 5 
the proof. You need not be told that persisting in 
a charge which one does not know to be true, is simply 
malicious slander. 

Some of you admit that no Republican designedly 
aided or encouraged the Harper's Ferry affair, but 10 
still insist that our doctrines and declarations neces- 
sarily lead to such results. We do not believe it. 
We know we hold no doctrine, and make no declara- 
tion, which were not held to and made by ^'our fathers 
who framed the Government under which we live." 15 
You never dealt fairly by us in relation to this affair. 
When it occurred, some important State elections were 
near at hand, and you were in evident glee with the 
belief that, by charging the blame upon us, you could 
get an advantage of us in those elections. The elec-20 
tions came, and your expectations were not quite ful- 
filled. Every Republican man knew that, as to himself 
at least, your charge was a slander, and he was not 
much inclined by it to cast his vote in your favor. Re- 
publican doctrines and declarations are accompanied 25 
with a continual protest against any interference 
whatever with your slaves, or with you about your 
slaves. Surely, this does not encourage them to 
revolt. True, we do, in common with "our fathers 
who framed the Government under which we live/' 30 
declare our belief that slavery is wrong; but the slaves 
do not hear us declare even this. For anything we 
say or do, the slaves would scarcely know there is a 
Republican party. I believe they would not, in fact, 
generally know it but for your misrepresentations of 35 
us in their hearing. In your political contests among 



52 THE COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS 

yourselves, each faction charges the other with sym^ 
pathy with Black Republicanism; and then, to give 
point to the charge, defines Black Republicanism to 
simply be insurrection, blood, and thunder among the 
5 slaves. 

Slave insurrections are no more common now than 
they were before the Republican party was organ- 
ized. What induced the Southampton insurrection, 
twenty-eight years ago, in which at least three times 

10 as many lives were lost as at Harper's Ferry? You 
can scarcely stretch your very elastic fancy to the con- 
clusion that Southampton was "got up by Black Re- 
publicanism." In the present state of things in the 
United States, I do not think a general, or even a very 

15 extensive, slave insurrection is possible. The indis- 
pensable concert of action cannot be obtained. The 
slaves have no means of rapid communication; nor 
can incendiary freemen, black or white, supply it. 
The explosive materials are everywhere in parcels; 

20 but there neither are, nor can be supplied, the indis- 
pensable connecting trains. 

Much is said by Southern people about the affection 
of slaves for their masters and mistresses; and a part 
of it, at least, is true. A plot for an uprising could 

25 scarcely be devised and communicated to twenty indi- 
viduals before some one of them, to save the Hfe of a 
favorite master or mistress, would divulge it. This is 
the rule; and the slave revolution in Hayti was not 
an exception to it, but a case occurring under peculiar 

30 circumstances. The gunpowder plot of British history, 
though not connected with slaves, was more in point. 
in that case, only about twenty were admitted to the 
secret; and yet one of them, in his anxiety to save a 
friend, betrayed the plot to that friend, and, by conse- 

35quence, averted the calamity. Occasional poisonings 
from the kitchen, and open or stealthy assassinations 



THE COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS 53 

in the field, and local revolts extending to a score or 
so, will continue to occur as the natural results of 
slavery; but no general insurrection of slaves, as I 
think, cah happen in this country for a long time. 
Whoever much fears, or much hopes, for such an 5 
event, will be alike disappointed. 

In the language of Mr. Jefferson, uttered many years 
ago, ''It is still in our power to direct the process of 
emancipation and deportation peaceably, and in such 
slow degrees, as that the evil will wear off insensibly; 10 
and their places be, pari passu, filled up by free white 
laborers. If, on the contrary, it is left to force itself 
on, human nature must shudder at the prospect held 
up." 

Mr. Jeffersorf did not mean to say, nor do I, that 15 
the power of emancipation is in the Federal Govern- 
ment. He spoke of Virginia; and, as to the power of 
emancipation, I speak of the slaveholding States 
only. 

The Federal Government, however, as we insist, has 20 
the power of restraining the extension of the institu- 
tion — the power to insure that a slave insurrection 
shall never occur on any American soil which is now 
free from slavery. 

John Brow^n's effort was peculiar. It was not a 25 
slave insurrection. It was an attempt by white men to 
get up a revolt among slaves, in which the slaves re- i 
fused to participate. In fact, it was so absurd that 
the slaves, with all their ignorance, saw plainly enough 
it could not succeed. That affair, in its philosophy, 30 
corresponds with the many attempts, related in history, 
at the assassination of kings and emperors. An en- 
thusiast broods over the oppression of a people till he 
fancies himself commissioned by Heaven to liberate 
them. He ventures the attempt, which ends in little 35 
else than in his own execution. Orsini's attempt on 



54 THE COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS 

Louis Napoleon, and John Brown's attempt at Harper's 
Ferry, were, in their philosophy, precisely the same. 
The eagerness to cast blame on old England in the one 
case, and on New England in the other, does not dis- 
5 prove the sameness of the two things. 

And how much would it avail you, if you could, by 
the use of John Brown, Helper's Book, and the like, 
break up the Republican organization? Human action 
can be modified to some extent, but human nature can- 

10 not be changed. There is a judgment and a feeling 
against slavery in this nation, which cast at least a 
million and a half of votes. You cannot destroy that 
judgment and feeling — that sentiment — by breaking 
up the political organization which rallies around it. 

15 You can scarcely scatter and disperse an army which 
has been formed into order in the face of your heaviest 
fire; but if you could, how much would you gain by 
forcing the sentiment w^hich created it out of the peace- 
ful channel of the ballot-box into some other channel? 

20 What would that other channel probably be? Would 
the number of John Browns be lessened or enlarged 
by the operation? 

But you will break up the Union rather than submit 
to a denial of your Constitutional rights. 

25 That has a somewhat reckless sound; but it would 
be palliated, if not fully justified, were we proposing, 
by the mere force of numbers, to deprive you of some 
right plaiQly written down in the Constitution. But 
we are proposing no such thing. 

30 When you make these declarations you have a 
specific and well understood allusion to an assumed 
constitutional right of yours to take slaves into the 
Federal Territories, and to hold them there as property. 
But no such right is specifically written in the Con- 

35Stitution. That instrument is literall}^ silent about 
any such right, We^ on the contrary, deny that such 



THE COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS 55 

a right has any existence in the Constitution, even 
by imphcation. 

Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will 
destroy the Government, unless j^ou be allowed to 
construe and force the Constitution as you please, on 5 
all points in dispute between you and ue. You will 
rule or ruin in all events. 

This, plainly stated, is your language. Perhaps you 
will say the Supreme Court has decided the disputed 
Constitutional question in your favor. Not quite so. 10 
But waiving the lawyer's distinction between dictum 
and decision, the court has decided the question for 
you in a sort of way. The court has substantially 
said, it is your constitutional right to take slaves into 
the Federal Territories, and to hold them there as 15 
property. 

When I say the decision was made in a sort of 
way, I mean it was made in a divided court, by a 
bare majority of the judges, and they not quite agree- 
ing with one another in the reasons for making it; 20 
that it is so made as that its avowed supporters 
disagree with one another about its meaning, and that 
it was mainly based upon a mistaken statement 
of fact — the statement in the opinion that "the right 
of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly 25 
affimied in the Constitution." 

An inspection of the Constitution will show that 
the right of property in a slave is not "distinctly and 
expressly affirmed" in it. Bear in mind, the judges 
do not pledge their judicial opinion that such right 30 
is impliedly affirmed in the Constitution; but they 
pledge their veracity that it is "distinctly and ex- 
pressly" affirmed there — "distinctly," that is, not 
mingled with anything else — "expressly," that is, in i 
words meaning just that, without the aid of any .35 
inference, and susceptible of no other meaning. 



56 THE COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS 

If they had only pledged their judicial opinion that 
Buch right is affirmed in the instrument by implica- 
tion, it would be open to others to show that neither 
the word "slave" nor " slavery '^ is to be found in the 
5 Constitution, nor the word '^property" even, in any 
connection with language alluding to the things slave, 
or slavery; and that wherever in that instrument 
the slave is alluded to, he is called a "person;'^ and 
wherever his master's legal right in relation to him is 

10 alluded to, it is spoken of as " service or labor which 
may be due " — as a debt payable in service or labor. 
Also it would be open to show, by contemporaneous 
history, that this mode of alluding to slaves and 
slavery, instead of speaking of them, was employed on 

15 purpose to exclude from the Constitution the idea that 
there could be property in man. 

To show all this is easy and certain. 
When this obvious mistake of the judges shall be 
brought to their notice, is it not reasonable to ex- 

20 pect that they will withdraw the mistaken statement, 
and reconsider the conclusion based upon it? 

And then it is to be remembered that " our fathers 
who framed the Government under which we live" — 
the men who made the Constitution — decided this 

25 same Constitutional question in our favor long ago : 
decided it without a division among themselves when 
making the decision; without division among them- 
selves about the meaning of it after it was made, and 
so far as any evidence is left, without basmg it upon 

30 any mistaken statement of facts. 

Under all these circumstances, do you really feel 
yourself justified to break up this Government unless 
such a court decision as yours is shall be at once sub- 
mitted to as a conclusive and final rule of political 

35 action? 

But you will not abide the election of a Republican 



THE COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS 57 

president! In that supposed event, you say, you 
will destroy the Union; and then, you say, the great 
crime of having destroyed it will be upon us \ 

That is cool. A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, 
and mutters through his teeth, "Stand and deliver, 5 
or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!" 

To be sure, what the robber demanded of me — my 
money — was my own; and I had a clear right to keep 
it; but it was no more my own than my vote is my 
own; and the threat of death to me, to extort my 10 
money, and the threat of destruction to the Union, 
to extort my vote, can scarcely be distinguished in 
principle. 

A few words now to Republicans. It is exceedingly 
desirable that all parts of this great Confederacy 15 
shall be at peace, and in harmony one with another. 
Let us Republicans do our part to have it so. Even 
though much provoked, let us do nothing through 
passion and ill temper. Even though the Southern 
people will not so much as listen to us, let us calmly 20 
consider their demands, and yield to them if, in our 
deliberate view of our duty, we possibly can. Judg- 
ing by all they say and do, and by the subject and 
nature of their controversy with us, let us determine 
if we can, what will satisfy them. 25 

Will they be satisfied if the Territories be uncon- 
ditionally surrendered to them? We know they will 
not. In all their present complaints against us, the 
Territories are scarcely mentioned. Invasions and 
insurrections are the rage now. Will it satisfy them 30 
if, in the future, we have nothing to do with invasions 
and insurrections? We know it will not. We so 
know, because we know we never had anything to do 
with invasions and insurrections; and yet this total 
abstaining does not exempt us from the charge and 35 
the denunciation. 



58 THE COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS 

The question recurs, What will satisfy them? 
Simply this: we must not only let them alone, but 
we must somehow convince them that we do let them 
alone. This, we know by experience, is no easy task. 
5 We have been so trying to convince them from the 
very beginning of our organization, but with no suc- 
cess. In all our platforms and s}3eeches w^e have con- 
stantly protested our purpose to let them alone; but 
this has had no tendency to convince them. Alike 

10 unavailing to convince them is the fact that they have 
never detected a man of us in any attempt to disturb 
them. 

These natural and apparently adequate means all 
failing, what will convince them? This, and this only: 

15 cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling 
it right. And this must be done thoroughly — done in 
ads as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated 
— we must place ourselves avowedly with them. Sena- 
tor Douglas's new sedition law must be enacted and 

20 enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is 
wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, 
or in private. We must arrest and return their fugi- 
tive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down 
our Free-State constitutions. The whole atmosphere 

25 must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to 
slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their 
troubles proceed from us. 

I am quite aware they do not state their case pre- 
cisely in this way. Most of them would probably say 

30 to us, "Let us alone; do nothing to us, and say what 
you please about slavery." But we do let them alone, 
— have never disturbed them, — so that, after all, it is 
what we say which dissatisfies them. They will con- 
tinue to accuse us of doing, until we cease saying. 

35 I am also aware they have not as yet in terms de- 
manded the overthrow of our Free-State constitutions. 



THE COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS 59 

Yet those constitutions declare the wrong of slavery 
with more solemn emphasis than do all other sayings 
against it; and when all these other sayings shall have 
been silenced, the overthrow of these constitutions 
will be demanded, and nothing be left to resist the 5 
demand. It is nothing to the contrary that they do 
not demand the whole of this just now. Demanding 
what they do, and for the reason they do, they can 
voluntarily stop nowhere short of this consummation. 
Holding, as they do, that slavery is morally right 10 
and socially elevating, they cannot cease to demand a 
full national recognition of it as a legal right and a 
social blessing. 

Nor can we justifiably withhold this on any ground 
save our conviction that slavery is wrong. If slavery 15 
is right, all words, acts, laws, and constitutions 
against it are themselves wrong, and should be silenced 
and swept away. If it is right, w^e cannot justly ob- 
ject to its nationality — its universality; if it is wrong, 
they cannot justly insist upon its extension — its en- 20 
largement. All they ask we could readily grant, if we 
thought slavery right ; all we ask they could as readily 
grant, if they thought it wrong. Their thinking it 
right and our thinking it wrong is the precise fact 
upon which depends the whole controversy. Thinking 25 
it right, as they do, they are not to blame for desiring 
its fuU recognition as being right; but thinking it 
wrong, as we do, can we yield to them? Can we cast 
our votes with their view, and against our own? In 
view of our moral, social, and political responsibilities, 30 
can we do this? 

Wrong as we think slavery is, we can yet afTord to 
let it alone where it is, because that much is due to 
the necessity arising from its actual presence in the 
nation; but can we, while our votes will prevent it, 35 
allow it to spread into the national Territories, and to 



'60 THE COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS 

overrun us here in these free States? If our sense of 
duty forbids this, then let us stand by our duty fear- 
lessly and effectively. Let us be diverted by none 
of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are 
5 so industriously plied and belabored — contrivances 
such as groping for some middle ground between the 
right and the wrong : vain as the search for a man who 
should be neither a living man nor a dead man; suck 
as a policy of "don't care" on a question about which 

10 all true men do care; such as Union appeals be- 
seeching true Union men to yield to Disunionists, re- 
versing the divine rule, and calling, not the sinners, 
but the righteous to repentance; such as invocations 
to Washington, imploring men to unsay what Wash- 

isington said and undo what Washington did. 

Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false 
accusations against us, nor frightened from it by 
menaces of destruction to the government, nor of 
dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right 

20 makes might, and in that faith let us to the end dare 
to do our duty as we understand it. 



QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR STUDY 

I. The Speeches on Copyright 

1. How Macaulay impressed reporters is seen in the testi- 
mony of Mr. Downing of the London " Daily News ": 

" Vehemence of thought, vehemence of language, vehemence 
of manner, were his chief characteristics. The listener might 
almost fancy he heard ideas and words gurgling in the speaker's 
throat for priority of utterance. There was nothing graduated 
or undulating about him. He plunged at once into the heart 
of the matter, and continued his loud resounding pace from 
beginning to end, without halt or pause. This vehemence 
and volume made Macaulay the terror of the reporters; and 
when he engaged in a subject outside their ordinary experience, 
they were fairly nonplused by the display of names, and dates, 
and titles. He was not a long-winded speaker. In fact, his 
earnestness was so great that it would have failed under a very 
long effort." 

Where in these two speeches do you imagine that these 
characteristics were exemplified? 

2. Sir Leslie Stephen remarks: " Clearness is the first of the 
cardinal virtues of style; and nobody ever wrote more clearly 
than Macaulay. He sacrifices much, it is true, in order to obtain 
it. He proves that two and two make four with a pertinacity 
that would make him dull, if it were not for his abundance of 
brilliant illustration. He always remembers the principle which 
should guide a barrister in addressing a jury. He has not merely 
to exhibit his proofs, but to hammer them into the heads of his 
audience by incessant repetition." Where do you find this 
principle illustrated in the two speeches on copyright? 

3. Sir Richard Jebb writes: " Macaulay had a wonderful 
fulness and variety of knowledge. His vivid imagination, 
drawing on the immense stores which his prodigious memory 
held ready for use at any mom.ent, gave him an almost unrivalled 

61 



62 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR STUDY 

command of brilliant illustration. Facts, images, analogies 
crowded upon his mind whenever he desired to enforce an 
argument or embellish a statement." What passages in the 
speeches contain these facts, images, and analogies? 

4. A Belgian writer says: 

** Macaulay's speeches were distinguished, indeed, much less 
by grace of expression, than by his lucidity, his arrangement 
of arguments, the brilliancy of his st^de, the vehemence and 
irony of his attacks. He stood motionless, talked rapidly, so 
rapidly that he was compared to an express train that did not 
stop even at the principal stations, and his voice, strong but 
metallic, possessed neither the variety of tone nor the delicacy 
of modulation by which masters of oratory have been able to 
produce their great effects." 

Where in particular do you suppose the qualities mentioned 
in the first sentence were most conspicuous in these speeches? 

5. A student of Macaulay passes this judgment: " His parlia- 
mentary career proves his capacit}' sufficiently, though want of 
the physical qualifications, and of exclusive devotion to political 
success, prevented him, as perha])S a want of subtlety or flex- 
ibility of mind would have always prevented him, from attain- 
ing excellence as a debater." Look through the account of the 
debate of 1842 in the Introduction to see if you find anj?^ sign 
of this want. 

6. Sir Richard Jebb declares that Macaulay's style is that 
of the born orator: 

' There is in it a sustained vivacity and rapidity which at 
once declare this. Macaulay imparts to written speech much 
of the impetus of oratory. . . . Oratory . . . implies an inward 
fire, a glow and movement of the spirit, a powerful and sincere 
emotion which the speaker can communicate to the hearers. 
. . . This oratorical character of Macaulay's style may be 
illustrated by one of its salient and familiar traits: I mean, 
his habit of placing very short sentences between his longer 
periods. . . . Such alternations of the long and short sentence 
correspond to a certain surging and subsidence of thought and 
feeling in the orator's mind." 

Examine several paragraphs to see if this trait appears in the 
speeches on copyright. 

7. Select the paragraphs which you think most oratorical or 



QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR STUDY 63 

eloquent. Either memorize them and deUver them to the class,. 
or read them aloud to the class, as your teacher directs. 

8. State in one paragraph the substance of the speech of 
1841; of 1842. 

9. Embody the central idea of each paragraph in a single 
sentence. Does Macaulay himself use any summarizing sen- 
tences? What words, phrases, or sentences does he intro- 
duce to show the relation between successive paragraphs? Do 
paragraphs 2 and 3 of the first speech present a contrast? (This 
study of sentences, paragraphs, and coherence of structure 
may be carried to any length desired.) 

10. Of Macaulay's second speech his biographer relates that 
" when he resumed his seat. Sir Robert Peel walked across the 
floor, and assured him that the last twenty minutes had radically 
altered his own views on the law of copyright." What para- 
graphs do you think produced that effect? If you had been 
sitting in the hall and inclined to favor the bill of each year, 
what would have been your state of mind after he had finished 
each section of his speech? 

11. Macaulay was a short man with a broad chest. Look 
at his portrait, and note the eyes, which were said to express 
deep thought and meaning. A reporter on the London " Stand- 
ard " says of his bearing during a speech: 

** He used scarcely any action. He would turn round on his 
heel, and lean slightly on the table; but there was nothing like 
demonstrative or dramatic action. He spoke with great rapid- 
ity; and there was very little inflection in the voice, which, 
however, in itself was not unmusical. It was somewhat monot- 
onous, and seldom rose or fell." 

On the basis of this quotation and of sections 1-6, draw a 
portrait of the ideal orator or debater and show what features 
of the portrait were possessed by Macaulay and in which he 
was lacking. 

12. Name five or six famous orations delivered during Mac- 
aulay's public life, with the occasion and results of each. Treat 
five orations of earlier times in the same way. Treat five ora- 
tions by living men in the same way. 

13. Describe the status of the debate when Macaulay delivered 
his first speech. What was his purpose in speaking? 

14. Many of Macaulay's arguments may be regarded as 



64 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR STUDY 

arguments from example; that is, a general statement or con- 
clusion arrived at after observing a number of examples of the 
class about which the statement is made. The most valuable 
tests for such arguments are the following: 

a. Are enough examples examined; i.e., is the relative size 
of the unobserved part of the class so small as to warrant 
the generalization? 
h. Are the members presented fair examples of the class? 

c. Does the arguer make it reasonably certain that there are 

no or few exceptions? 

d. Is it highly probable that such a general statement is 

true? 

15. Apply these tests to the proof for the following state- 
ments: 

Copyright is a nullity to the author, p. 10, 1. 25. 

The fashion of thinking and writing changes, p. 13, 1. 25. 

The family of the author will not be enriched by copyright, 
p. 14 1. 8. 

Copyright will lead to the suppression or mutilation of valu- 
able works, p. 16, 1. 1. 

(You may gain some assistance from the refutation used by 
Lord Mahon, pp. 67, 68). 

16. Select arguments from example in Macaulay's second 
speech, and to apply to them the tests used above. 

17. How does Macaulay prove that the question under debate 
is one of expediency rather than of justice? 

18. What parts of Macaulay's two speeches are refutation? 
How does he attack his opponents? Compare his method 
with Lord Mahon' s. 

19. Do you find in Macaulay's speeches all of the parts of a 
classical oration, such as one of Cicero's: exordium, status, 
statement of facts, argument, refutation, peroration? 

20. Mr. Serjeant Talfourd, in replying to Macaulay, objected 
that Macaulay had not grappled with the great examples 
adduced in favor of the bill, such as Wordsworth and Campbell. 
Is this a strong objection? 

21. Look at the refutation employed by Lord Mahon as seen 
in the brief on pp. 66-69. Does he convince you that Macaulay 
has argued fallaciously? 

22. Look over the refutation brought forward in the speeches 



QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR STUDY 65 

summarized in the Introduction, pp. xvi-xLx. Does any of it 
shake any of Macaulay's arguments? 

23. In the second debate summarized in the Introduction on 
pp. xvii-xx trace the steps by which the weakness of Macaulay's 
proposed amendment was made prominent. What part of the 
debate do you think had most influence in securing the adoption 
of the addition of seven years after the author's death to the 
term of copyright? 

24. On the model of the brief of Lord Mahon's speech, pp. 
66-69, with the assistance of the material in the Introduction, 
prepare an introduction for Macaulay's first speech on the 
copyright. Be sure you state the proposition precisely, and 
that you find the issues. 

25. On the same model prepare the brief proper. 

26. Prepare a complete brief for Macaulay's second speech. 

27. In the volume containing all of Macaulay's speeches, 
(see p. xxi) select one that you especially like and compare 
it with one of the copyright speeches according to a carefully 
prepared plan. 

28. Imagine that Talfourd, Mahon, and Macaulay are walk- 
ing in a park along the Thames, discussing the duration of 
copyright. Write put the conversation. 

29. Imagine that you were a member of the British parlia- 
ment in 1911, when the present British copyright bill was 
passed. The important provisions of that bill are: first, " The 
term for which copyright shall subsist shall, except as other- 
wise expressly pro vided by this Act, be the life of the author 
and a period of fifty years after his death," and, secondly, 
" Where the author of a work is the first owner of the copy- 
right therein, no assignment, and no grant of any interest therein, 
made by him (otherwise than by will) after the passing of this 
Act, shall be operative to vest in the assignee or grantee any 
rights with respect to the copyright in the work beyond the 
expiration of twenty-five years from the author's death," — 
which means that the author cannot sell the copyright for a term 
of more than twenty-five years after his death. Make a speech 
in favor of this bill. 

30. Ascertain the period during' which a patent is good. Can 
you justify the difference between it and that of copyright? 



66 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR STUDY 



Brief of Lord Mahon's Speec 

Delivered in the House of Commons, April 6, 1842 
Resolved: That the period of copyright shall endure for the 
natural life of the author and for the further term of twenty- 
five years commencing at the time of his death. 

Introduction 

I. History and Origin of the Question. 

A. Copyright was of little importance for two centuries after 

the invention of printing, for 

1. Readers were few. 

2. Patronage then supported authors. 

B. Copyright became a question of interest under Sir Robert 

Walpole, for 

1. Patronage then came to an end. 

2. A reading public began to arise. 

C. At the commencement of the reign of George IH. authors 

enjoyed according to common law a perpetual copyright, 

for 

1. Though the right had been inadvertently limited by 
the statute of Queen Anne in 1709, courts of equity 
for many j-ears continued to grant injunctions for 
protection of cop^Tights from seventy to one hundred 
years old. 

D. Not till 1774 did the House of Lords by a vote of six to 

five decide that under the law of 1709 copyright ex- 
tended only to fourteen years, and to fourteen more 
should the author be surviving at the close of the first 
term. 

E. The law of 1814 extended the period to twenty-eight years 

or the life of the author. 
[The following sections, usual in a model introduction, are 
not found in the speech. 

II. Definitions. As the question had been debated for five 
years, no definitions were considered necessary. 

III. Admitted, Waived, and Irrelevant Matter. Omitted 
for the same reason. 

IV. Issues. None stated, but from the course of the speech 
it is apparent that he considered the following: 



QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR STUDY 67 

A. Is copyright just? 

B. Will the proposed law be of any use to the author? 

1. Will it lead to suppression of his works? 

2. Will it increase his income? 

C. Will it raise the price of books to the pubUc? 

D. Will it encourage authorship? 

E. Is it favored by the classes of the public affected?] 

Brief Proper ♦ 

I. Refutation. The argument that the moment an author 
puts his thoughts on paper and delivers them to the world his 
property therein utterly ceases, is unjust, for 

A. M. Lamartine, of the French Chamber of Deputies, holds a 

contrary view. 

B. An author obviously has as much right of property in his 

ideas as the man who reclaims a field from the waste has 
to the field. 

II. Refutation. The eloquent argument of Mr. Macaulay 
that the proposed law will entail a great risk of the suppression 
of valuable works is unproved, for 

A. The case of Richardson's grandson does not support this 

view, for 

1. His objection to reading the novels himself does not 

prove that he desired to prohibit all mankind from 
reading them. 

2. His brother, whose concurrence was necessary, would 

not have agreed to the suppression. 

B. The case of Bos well's son does not support this view, for 

1. There is no evidence that he wished to suppress the 

" Life of Johnson." 

2. The work was in too general circulation for the sup- 

pression to be effective. 

C. It is based on the fallacy that it is as easy to suppress a work 

spread abroad by the tens of thousands as a work in 
manuscript. 

D. The proposed law will empower the Privy Council Judicial 

Committee to licetise works for publication in case of 
attempted suppression. 

III. Refutation. The argument of Mr. Macaulay that the ex- 
tension would be useless to authors themselves is unfounded, for 



68 QUESTIOXS AND TOPICS FOR STUDY 

A. The case of Dr. Johnson does not support it, for 

1. Dr. Johnson declared in favor of copyright for a period 

not shorter than a hundred years. 

2. The proposed law would have enabled him to marry 

again. 

IV. Refutation. The i:)roposal that the term of copyright 
be left within the discretion of the Privy Council is inadvisable, 
for 

A. Lord Campbell, the proposer, no longer favors it. 

B. Rival claims could not be settled by the Privy Council, 

for 

1. The Councillors are not competent judges of literature. 

2. Their judgm.ent would be warped by political considera- 

tions. 

V. Refutation. The argument that the proposed law will tend 
to increase the price of books is unsound, for 

A. Books containing maps and engravings will thereby become 

cheaper. 

B. Booksellers know that their interests would be better pro- 

moted by low prices to the multitudes, for 
1. The demand for useful and economical books has thrown 
the desire for splendid books quite into the back- 
ground. 

VI. A much more complete mode of remuneration than that 
proposed in the bill ought to be provided for literary men, for 

A. They cannot be rewarded by places and pensions. 

B. The fairest remuneration is the patronage of the public, 

for 

1. It gives the greatest reward to the best books. 

2. It does not tax the idle for the studious, for 

a. Only readers will buy books. 

C. Authors should be encouraged to write for a permanent 

and enduring fame, for 

1. To write in accordance with the literary standards 
of the hour produces merely ephemeral works. 

D. There has been a gradual extension of the tenn of copy- 

right all over Europe, for 

1. Russia and Spain have increased the term. 

2. France grants ten years absolutely after the death of 

the author and twenty years if he leaves kindred. 



QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR STUDY 69 

3. France is now trying to extend the period to fifty 
years after death. 
E. England should take the lead in such encouragement, for 

1. The distresses of men of genius have a peculiar claim 

on our sympathy. 

2. Such encouragement will help the nation at large, for 

a. Sou they 's " Life of Nelson " has increased patri- 
otic pride in our navy. 
VII. The leading men among authors, publishers, printers, 
stationers, have petitioned the House to adopt the bill as it 
now stands. 

Conclusion 

Since copyright is just, since the proposed law will be of use 
to authors, since it will not materially increase the price of 
books to the public, since it will encourage authorship, and since 
it is favored by the classes of the public affected, the term of 
copyright should endure for the natural life of the author and 
for the further term of twenty-five years commencing at the 
time of his death. 

II. The Cooper Institute Address 

1. William H. Herndon, Lincoln's law partner for twenty 
years, thus describes Lincoln's manner in speaking: 

" When standing erect he was six feet four inches high. He 
was lean in flesh and ungainly in figure. Aside from the sad, 
pained look due to habitual melancholy, his face had no char- 
acteristic or fixed expression. He was thin through the chest, 
and hence slightly stoop-shouldered. When he arose to address 
courts, juries, or crowds of people, his body inclined forward 
to a slight degree. At first he was very awkward, and it seemed 
a real labor to adjust himself to his surroundings. He struggled 
for a time under a feeling of apparent diffidence and sensitive- 
ness, and these only added to his awkwardness. I have often 
seen and sympathized with Mr. Lincoln during these moments. 
When he began speaking, his voice was shrill, piping, and 
unpleasant. His manner, his attitude, his dark, yellow face, 
wrinkled and dry, his oddity of pose, his diffident movements — 
everything seemed to be against him, but only for a short 
time. 



70 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR STUDY 

" As he proceeded he became somewhat animated, and to keep 
in harmony with his growing warmth his hands relaxed their 
grasp and fell to his side. Presently he clasped the ii in front 
of him, interlocking his fingers, one thumb meanwhile chasing 
another. His speech now requiring more emphatic utterance, 
his fingers unlocked and his hands fell apart. His left arm was 
thro\\Ti behind, the back of his hand resting against his body, 
his right hand seeking his side. By this time he had gained 
sufficient composure, and his real speech began. He did not 
gesticulate as much with his hands as with his head. He 
used the latter frequently, throwing it with vim this way and 
that. This movement was a significant one when he sought to 
enforce his statement. It sometimes came with a quick jerk, 
as if throwing sparks into combustible material. He never 
sawed the air nor rent space into tatters and rags as some 
orators do. He never acted for stage effect. He was cool, 
considerate, reflective, — in time self-possessed and self-reliant. 

" As he moved along in his speech he became freer and less 
uneasy in his movements; to that extent he was graceful. He 
had a perfect naturalness, a strong individuality; and to that 
extent he was dignified. He despised glitter, show, set forms, 
and shams. He spoke with effectiveness and to move the judg- 
ment as well as the emotions of men. There was a world of 
meaning and emphasis in the long, bony finger of his right 
hand as he dotted the ideas on the minds of his hearers. Some- 
times, to express joy or pleasure, he would raise both hands at 
an angle of about fifty degrees, the palms upw^ard, as if desirous 
of embracing the spirit of that which he loved. If the senti- 
ment was one of detestation — denunciation of slavery, for 
example — both arms, thrown upward and fists clenched, swept 
through the air, and he expressed an execration that was truly 
sublime. This was one of his most effective gestures, and sig- 
nified most vividly a fixed determination to drag down the object 
of his hatred and trample it in the dust. 

" He always stood squarely on his feet, toe even with toe; 
that is, he never put one foot before the other. He neither 
touched nor leaned on anything for support. He made but 
few changes in his positions and attitudes. He never ranted, 
never walked backward and forward on the platform. To 
ease his arms he frequently caught hold, with his left hand, 



QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR STUDY 71 

of the lapel of his coat, keeping his thumb upright and leaving 
his right hand free to gesticulate. The designer of the monu- 
ment recently erected in Chicago has happily caught him in 
just that attitude. As he proceeded with his speech the exer- 
cise of his vocal organs altered somewhat the tone of his voice. 
It lost in a measure its former acute and shrilling pitch, and 
mellowed into a more harmonious and pleasant sound. His 
form expanded, and, notwithstanding the sunken breast, he 
rose up a splendid and imposing figure. His little gray eyes 
flashed in a face aglow with the fire of his profound thoughts; 
and his uneasy movements and diffident manner sunk them- 
selves beneath the w^ave of righteous indignation that came 
sweeping over him. Such was Lincoln the orator." 

Compare this description with the accounts in the Intro- 
duction, — (a) At what points in the speech do you think, if 
you had been present, you might have seen " the kindling eye 
and mirth-provoking look " mentioned in the " Tribune " 
account? (b) At what points do you think he used his three 
chief gestures? (c) At what points do you think he was " a 
splendid and imposing figure "? 

2. " Mr. Lincoln's speech excited frequent and irrepressible 
applause," the " Tribune " reported the next morning. " His 
occasional repetition of the text never failed to provoke a burst 
of cheers and audible smiles." Can you account for this effect? 

3. " The smiles, the laughter, the outburst of applause which 
greeted and emphasized the speaker's telling points, showed 
Mr. Lincoln that his arguments m.et ready acceptance." Go 
through the speech, picking out the " telHng points " which 
you think were thus greeted. 

4. The New York " Evening Post " in its editorial notice 
the next day, February 28, 1860, said: " We have made room 
for Mr. Lincoln's speech notwithstanding the pressure of other 
matters, and our readers will see that it is well worthy of the 
deep attention with which it was heard. That part of it in 
which the speaker places the Republican party on the very 
ground occupied by the framers of our constitution and fathers 
of our republic strikes us as particularly forcible." What 
portion is this? Why is it particularly forcible? 

5. " Lincoln appealed alike to scholars, men of business, and 
the common people, for such clearness of statement and irref- 



72 QUESTIOXS AND TOPICS FOR STUDY 

ragable proofs had not been known since the death of Webster.'' 
Point out passages that you think would appeal to each of these 
classes. 

6. What classes of people did Lincoln have in mind in pre- 
paring the speech? How did he hope to influence them? 

7. Nicolay and Hay, Lincoln's biographers, declare: "The 
most impressive, as well as the most valuable, feature of 
Lincoln's address was its concluding portion." Think out all 
the reasons you can for this statement. 

8. Make a report on Cooper Institute, why it was founded, 
when it was built, and some of the famous occasions it has 
seen. 

9. Macaulay's nephew declares that " if a debate was in 
prospect he would turn the subject over while he paced his 
chamber or tramped the streets. Each thought as it arose in 
his mind, embodied itself in phrases, and clothed itself in an 
appropriate drapery of images, instances, and quotations; 
and when, in the course of his speech, the thought recurred, 
all the words which gave it point and beauty spontaneously 
recurred with it." Look through the Introduction and sections 
19 and 20 below to determine how Lincoln's method of pre- 
paring a speech differed from ]\Iacaulay's and wh}-? 

10. Is the tone of Lincoln's speech stiff or informal? Is it 
concihatory or aggressive? How does it compare in these 
respects with Macaulay's speeches? 

11. Janies Ford Rhodes in his " History of the I'nited States " 
avers: " Lincoln's bursts of eloquence, under the influence 
of noble passion, are still read with delight by the lovers of 
humanity and constitutional government." Do you find any 
such bursts in this speech? Vv^hat is the most impressive sen- 
tence? Look through some of his other famous speeches and 
addresses for examples. Memorize from this speech and other 
speeches passages for delivery before the class. 

12. Mention the occasion and significance of five orations 
delivered during Lincoln's life; of five American orations 
before his day; of five since his day. 

13. One student thinks that Lincoln's '' simple and forcible 
vocabulary was due to the study of the Bible and Shakespeare." 
What allusions to or quotations from either do you find in this 
speech? 



QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR STUDY 73 

14. Compile a list of words in the speech that you do not 
understand. Compare this list with a similar one compiled 
from one of Macaulay's speeches. 

15. " The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all 
taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe 
that all their troubles proceed from us." p. 58, 1. 24. Does this 
figure help to make clear Lincoln's meaning? Select other 
figures from the speech, and compare them with an equal num- 
ber from Macaulay's. What differences do you note? 

16. How does Lincoln make clear to the reader or listener the 
fact that he is passing from one division of his speech to the 
next? 

17. Can you sum up the whole speech in a single sentence? 

18. It has been said that a chief characteristic of this speech 
is precision of statement. What sentences in particular seem 
to you to say no more and no less than Lincoln intended? Does 
he use technical words to secure exactness? 

19. "A single, easy, simple sentence of plain Anglo-Saxon 
words contains a chapter of history that, in some instances, 
has taken da^/s of labor to verify and which must have cost 
the author months of investigation to acquire." What sentences 
do you select as illustrative of this statement by the first 
editors? 

20. " No one who has not actually attempted to verify its 
details can understand the patient research and historical labor 
which it embodies. The history of our earlier politics is scattered 
through numerous journals, statutes, pamphlets, and letters; 
and these are defective in completeness and accuracy of state- 
ment, and in indices and tables of contents. Neither can any 
one who has not traveled over the precise ground appreciate 
the accuracy of every trivial detail, or the self-denying impar- 
tiality with which Mr. Lincoln has turned from the testimony 
of ' the Fathers,' on the general question of slavery, to present 
the single question which he discusses." So state the first 
editors of Lincoln's speech. What paragraphs, do you think, 
show impartiality in presenting evidence and in dealing with 
his opponent? 

21. Look carefully through the brief of Douglas's speech 
given on pp. 75-78 and the excerpt from it, pp. 78-79. If 
possible, look up his Hfe in a large history of the United States 



74 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR STUDY 

or a life of Lincoln. Compare him with Lincoln as an 
orator and debater. 

22. Resolved: That Lincoln was a greater debater than 
Macaulay. Let the class take sides on this question and argue 
it out. 

23. By means of the Introduction trace the long rivalry 
between Douglas and Lincoln, making clear the clash in their 
views on slavery. What was the chief point of difference 
between Douglas and Lincoln throughout their long fight? 

24. At Lincoln's first inauguration Douglas held Lincoln's 
tall silk hat while the president delivered his inaugural. Imagine 
them in private conversation afterward talking over previous 
encounters. Write out the conversation. 

25. Using the matter in the Introduction under " Lincoln 
and Slavery," together with Lincoln's own speech, draw up a 
complete introduction to a brief on the subject developed by 
Lincoln in pp. 35-46. Be careful to state the proposition 
precisely. 

26. Prepare a brief on Lincoln's speech, pp. 35-46, on the 
model of the one of Senator Douglas, pp. 75-78. 

27. Study the brief of Douglas's speech and the excerpt from 
it, pp. 75-79. Does he or Lincoln furnish the more convincing 
proof of the statement in the " text "? 

28. Apply to Lincoln's speech, pp. 35-46, the tests for argu- 
ment from example given on p. 64. 

29. Reduce to the form of a brief, pp. 47-57, phrasing as much 
of it as you think proper as refutation. What is Lincoln's 
purpose in this section? 

30. What do you gather were the relations between the North 
and the South at the tune of this speech? What are those 
relations now? 

3L Why does Lincoln lay so much emphasis on the opinions 
of " the fathers "? Are we guided by them so much in politics 
to-day? 

32. " Measured by the severest tests of a great speech, by 
the use of simple Saxon, by the beauty of its rhetoric, by the 
grip of its logic, by the breadth of its historical illustrations, 
by the range of its research, by its freedom from scholastic 
pretensions, by its brotherly, conciliatory, yet unflinching 
treatment of its adversaries, by its wise admonitions to its friends, 



QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR STUDY 75 

by its manly avowal of the power of the right, by its reverential 
acknowledgment of God, by the vast results it achieved — by 
all these great elements that make a great speech, it is equal 
to any speech recorded in any language." Bishop Fowler. 
Can you find all these qualities in the speech? 

Brief for the Speech of Senator Stephen A. Douglas 

Delivered at Columbus, Ohio, September 7, 1859 
Resolved: That you should support the Democratic party. 

Introduction 

I. Origin and History of the Question. 

A. The Democratic party holds to the great principle of the 

Nebraska Bill which tells every political community to 
regulate its o^\'n affairs. 

B. The Republican party holds that there is an irrepressible 

conflict between free and slave states which can be 
settled only by Congress' making the country all free 
or all slave, for 

1. Mr. Seward developed the idea of an irrepressible 

conflict in a speech at Rochester. 

2. Mr. Lincoln at Springfield developed the idea that 

the country Vv'ould become all free or all slave. 

3. The RepubHcan platform at Philadelphia in 1856 de- 

clared that Congress has sovereign power over all 
territories. 

C. The Democratic party, on the contrary, maintains that the 

Federal Government has no right to interfere in the 
question in any way. 
[The remaining sections usual in a model introduction do not 
occur in Douglas's speech. 

II. Definitions. The agitation had been going on for some 
five years, so that definitions were unnecessary. 

III. Admitted, Waived, and Irrelevant Matter. Omitted 
for the same reason. 

IV. Issues. Not stated, but the speech, though somewhat 
rambUng and lacking in precision of statement, is based on the 
following: 



76 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR STUDY 

A. Was the Democratic principle of allowing ever}' political 

community to regulate its own affairs operative before 
the formation of the Constitution? 

B. Is it denied by the Constitution? 

C. Will it settle the slavery question more surely than the 

Republican principle?] ■ 

Brief Proper 

I. The Democratic principle was operative before the for- 
mation of the Constitution, for 

A. It actuated the colonies before the Revolution, for 

1. Virginia in 1699 passed a law imposing heavy penalties 

upon all slaves brought into the colony after that date. 

2. This colony passed later thirty-one successive laws 

with the same purpose, each annulled by Great 
Britain. 

3. This colony renewed the agitation in a petition in 1772. 

4. Similar legislation was enacted in other colonies. 

B. It actuated them in their joint efforts, for 

1. The Bill of Rights in 1774 demanded for the colonies 

the right to legislate on all internal matters. 

2. The Declaration of Independence was a vindication 

of this principle. 

3. The battles of the Revolution were fought to maintain 

this principle. 

C. It was maintained after the Revolution, for 

1. In 1784 Congress struck out Jefferson's proposal to 
prohibit slavery in the Northwest Territory which 
had been granted by Virginia. 

II. Refutation. The argument of the Republicans' that the 
Federal Government has power to control slavery in the terri- 
tories is illogical, for 

A. The Republicans grant the power of local government in 

all matters but the negro. 

B. The negro is property as much as an ox or a horse. 

C. Each section is best fitted to determine what laws it needs, 

for 
1. " Our fathers, when they framed this Government under 
which we live "... knew that each locaUty required 
a different law, for 



QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR STUDY 77 

a. If they had made the laws uniform, they would 
have established slavery, for 
1. Twelve of the thirteen colonies then held 
slaves. 

D. The present free states have become free by the operation 

of the principle of local government, for 

1. One-half of the original slave-holding states have be- 

come free by their own vote. 

2. Refutation. The argument that Ohio became free by 

the Ordinance of 1787 is untrue, for 
a. " Gentlemen of Ohio, you are a free state because 
you chose to be free." 

E. For the Federal Government to make laws uniform is to 

make government tyrannical, for 

1. Virginia knows better than Ohio what laws are best 

for it. 

2. Local government has been fought for by both North 

and South. 

3. It will allow one section to dominate the other, for 

a. The real purpose of the Republicans is to fan 

sectional strife. 
h. The constant cry of the South is for a national 

law to protect slavery in the territories. 

F. It is plainly denied by the Constitution, for 

1. The fugitive-slave provision speaks of persons " held 

to service in labor in one state imder the law thereof." 

2. " State " in that clause means territories also. 

III. Popular sovereignty is the only sure way of settling the 
question of slavery, for 

A. In the approaching Congress Republicans will demand that 

New Mexico be admitted with a free constitution. 

B. The Southerners will make counter demands that Kansas 

adopt a slave constitution. 

C. Any territory with a sufficient population to organize a 

government is capable of self-government, for 
1. The argument against " Squatter Sovereignty " is 
based on a misunderstanding of Calhoun's posi- 
tion. 

D. It admits of an indefinite expansion for our country, for 

1. Under this rule we have already reached the Pacific. 



78 QUESTIOXS AND TOPICS FOR STUDY 

2. We are bound to expand and spread until we absorb 
the entire continent of America. 
E. It serves and preserves liberty. 

Conclusion 

Since the Democratic principle that every political community' 
should regulate its own affairs actuated the Colonies before the 
formation of the Constitution, since it is illogical to deny that 
this principle is in the Constitution, and since observance of this 
principle is the surest means of settling the slavery question, 
you should support the Democratic party. 

Quotation from Douglas's Speech 

The section of the speech in which Douglas made the state- 
ment used by Lincoln as his text runs as follows: 

I hold that the people of the Territories have the same right 
to legislate in regard to slave property that they have in regard 
to any and every kind of property [' Right ' and applause]. 
The Constitution places all kinds of property on an equal foot- 
ing. The Northern and the Southern man enter the Territory 
on an exact equality, and carry their property with them, and 
hold it there subject to local law. If that local law is for them, 
then they will be protected; if it is against them, thej^ had better 
keep their jiroperty somewhere else. Why, then, should we 
prohibit the settlers of the Territory from introducing or exclud- 
ing Slavery, either to gratify the Republicans in the North, 
or the Southern Oppositionists in the slave States? If we will 
only apply the great principle of non-intervention by Congress, 
and self-government in the Territories, leaving the people to 
do as they please, there will be peace and harmony between 
all sections of the Union. 

" What interest have you in Ohio in the question of Slavery 
in South Carolina? You say that you do not think that Slavery 
is necessary or beneficial. That may be true, but your opinion 
might be different if your property was all invested in a nice 
[rice] plantation in South Carolina, where the white man cannot 
live and cultivate the soil. In Ohio it is a question only between 
the white man and the negro [Laughter]. But if you go further 
South you will find that it is a question between the negro and 



I! 



QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR STUDY 79 

the crocodile [Renewed laughter]. The question then may be 
a very different one under different climates. 

''Our fathers, when they framed this Government under which we 
live, understood this question just as well, and even better, than 
we do now. They knew when they made this Republic that a 
country so broad as ours, with such a variety of climate, soil 
and productions, must have a variety of interests, requiring 
different laws adapted to each locality. They knew that the 
laws which would suit the green fields of New England were 
illy [sic] adapted to the rice plantations of South CaroUna; 
that the laws and the regulations which would suit the corn 
and wheat fields of Ohio might not be well adapted to the 
sugar plantations of Louisiana; that the people in different 
localities, having a different climate, different interests and 
necessities, would want different laws adapted to each locality; 
and hence, when the Constitution was made, it was adopted on 
the theory that each state should decide the Slavery question 
for itself, and also all the local and domestic questions." 



NOTES 

The First Speech on Copyright 

Page 3. line 1. Sirt Macaulay is addressing the speaker of 
the House of Commons, Charles Shaw-Lefevre who served as 
speaker with distinction from 1839 to 1857. 

3. 8. my honorable and learned friend: Thomas Noon 
Talfourd (1795-1854), in that day a well-known dramatist, 
essayist, and lawyer. He was called Serjeant Talfourd because 
in 1833 he became serjeant on the Oxford circuit and rose to be 
unquestioned leader of the bar in that district. For his connec- 
tion with copyright, see Introduction. 

4. 2. indefeasible: Look up the derivation of this word. 

4. 5. act of attainder: What, exactly, is an act of attainder? 
Do we have such acts in the United States? Would Macaulay's 
statement be true in England to-day? 

4. 22. Paley, William (1743-1805), was a philosopher and 
theologian who rose to high office in the Church of England. 

5. 17. primogeniture, or gavelkind, or borough English: 
To define these terms you need only to read the passage 
above beginning ''modes of succession" (1. 2). For example, 
primogeniture is defined in " land generally descends to the 
eldest son." In the same way think out the meaning of jure 
dii)ino, pars rationabilis, Custom of York, Custom of London. 
What principle is Macaulay trying to establish? How does 
it apply to copyright after the author's death? 

7. 23ff. Maecenas and PoUio : This sentence is an illustration 
of Macaulay's power of illustration, for into it he has compressed 
the chief points in the history of patronage. McEcenas and 
Pollio were Roman statesmen of the first century b.c, who 
befriended and helped Vergil and Horace. The Medici, a family 
of statesmen in Florence, was most prominent in the fifteenth 
century. Lorenzo the Magnificent (1449-1492) was especially 
conspicuous in encouragement of letters and art. Louis the 

81 



82 NOTES 

Fourteenth, king of France from 1643 to 1715, saw the most 
splendid period in French Hterature, when Racine, Corneille, 
Moliere, and Boileaii were writing. Lord Halifax (1661-1715) 
and Lord Oxford (1661-1724) were EngUsh statesmen of great 
influence, the first under William and Mary, the second under 
Queen Anne. Who were the great writers whom they assisted? 

8. 32. East India Company, founded by London merchants, 
was in 1600 granted by Elizabeth the monopoly of the East 
India trade in order to compete with the Dutch in the Indian 
Ocean. In the middle of the eighteenth century the company 
acquired also political supremacy in India under the leader- 
ship of Clive and Hastings. Read the absorbing essays of 
Macaulay on these men in Longmans' English Classics. See 
Introduction, p. Ill, for Macaulay's connection with the com- 
pany. Is it still in existence? 

9. 13. Lord Essex: Robert £)evereux, Second Earl of Essex 
(1567-1601), received many favors from Elizabeth. English 
monarchs had long granted m.onopolies to favorites. Elizabeth 
granted them on leather, salt, coal, and a hundred other com- 
modities. Sir Walter Raleigh held one on playing cards. Read 
a good history of England for the protest against them in 1601. 

10. 13. Australasian continent: What parts of Australia 
were settled in 1841? Is the heart of the continent valuable 
now for grazing? 

10. 22. Piince Esterhazy: Prince Paul Anton von Ester- 
hdzy von Galantha of Austria was ambassador at London 
1815-1818 and 1830-1838. He owned larger estates in land 
than any other subject of Austria. 

10. 29. Dr. Johnson, Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) was the 
foremost literary man of his time. What books did he write 
beside these mentioned in this paragraph? Are they read 
to-day? Why? 

11. 10. Juvenal was the greatest of the Roman satirists. 
Two of his sixteen satirical poems Dr. Johnson imitated in his 
poems, " London " and " The Vanity of Human Wishes." 

11. 12. our means Parliament's. How did Dr. Johnson 
report these debates? 

12. 36. Blenheim is an estate near Oxford some twelve niiles 
in circumference, with an imposing palace that was eleven years 
in building and cost two and a half million dollars. The whole 



NOTES 83 

property was given to John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough 
(1650-1722), for his victory over the French at Blenheim. 

13. 1. Strathfieldsaye, about fifty miles southwest of London, 
was the seat of Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington (1769- 
1852), the victor at Waterloo over Napoleon, 1815. 

13. 31. Cowley's Poems w^ere during his lifetime (1618- 
1667) far more popular than those of his great contemporary, 
John Milton (1608-1674), or of any other poet of his time. 
The question, " Who now reads Cowley? " occurs in line 75 
of Pope's " The First Epistle of the Second Book of Horace 
Imitated" (1737). You will find the satire throughout the 
poem entertaining. Are the names of authors in this para- 
graph arranged chronologically or in anti-climax? 

13. 32. Pope, Alexander (1688-1744), was the leading poet 
of his generation. You will enjoy his " The Rape of the Lock " 
and his translation of Homer. 

13. 35. Bolingbroke, Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke 
(1678-1751), was a brilliant but superficial English orator and 
politician. David Mallet published his "Works" in five vol- 
umes in 1754. They reappeared in eleven volumes in 1786, 
and in eight volumes in 1809. His " Letters and Correspond- 
ence " appeared in two volumes in 1798. Do these facts sup- 
port Macaulay's statement? W^hv does Macaulay select 1814 
instead of 1809? 

14. 2. Paternoster Row, so called because the prayer-books 
of the Church of England were formerly sold there, is a short 
street north of St. Paul's Cathedral. It has long been famous 
as a centre of Lpndon book publishing. 

14. 3. Hayley's (1745-1820) " Triumphs of Temper " was 
published in 1781 and ran to twelve or fourteen editions. His 
friend Southey wrote of him that everything was good about 
him except his poetry. In his " Essay on Byron " Macaulay 
declared: " Poetry had sunk into such decay that Mr. Hay ley 
was thought a great poet." 

14. 16. Milton's granddaughter: The history of the cop}^- 
right on " Paradise Lost " is given on p. xiv. Symmons sold 
the copyright a few years later for twenty-five pounds. Jacob 
Tonson (1656-1736) secured the copyright as early as 1695. 
It was his grandnephew and successor, Jacob Tonson the 
third, who brought the injunction mentioned by Macaulay. 



84 NOTES 

Would the present English law (see p. 65 : 29) have helped Mrs. 
EHzabeth Foster, Milton's granddaughter? She was the widow 
of a weaver and died May 9, 1754, being probably the last of 
Milton's descendants. 

14. 24. Garrick, David (1716-1779) was a pupil and intimate 
friend of Dr. Johnson, and became one of the greatest of English 
actors. He gave the benefit on April 5, 1750, which netted one 
hundred thirty pounds with other subscriptions. 

16. 9. Fielding, Henry (1707-1754), wrote, besides "Tom 
Jones " (1749), two other great novels, " Joseph Andrews " 
(1742), and " Amelia " (1751), both mentioned on p. 32. 
Coleridge was of opinion that the " (Edipus Rex" of Sophocles, 
Ben Jonson's " Alchemist " and " Tom Jones " have the best 
plots in all hterature. 

16. 10. Gibbon's " History " ranks as among the greatest 
historical works ever written. Though it was completed in 
1788, it is still an authority for the period from a.d. 100 to 
A.D. 1453. His treatment of Christianity is by some regarded 
as prejudiced. 

16. 19. Richardson's novels were the first English novels 
of domestic life. " Pamela " (1740) was in two volumes. 
" Clarissa Harlowe " (1747-8) extended to eight volumes. 
Another of his novels, " Sir Charles Grandison " (pubhshed 
in 1753 in six volumes) is referred to on p. 32. 

16. 33. Mr. Wilberforce: William AVilberforce (1759-1833) 
published in 1797 his " celebrated religious treatise," " A 
Practical View of the Prevaihng Religious System of Professed 
Christians contrasted with Real Christianity." Before the 
end of the year it ran through five editions, and by 1826 had 
reached fifteen in England and twenty-five in America. As 
a leader in parliament in the fight against slavery, he was an 
intimate friend of Macaulay's father in Clapham. As a boy 
Macaulay saw him often. Read Trevelyan, " Life of Macaulay," 
chapter I. 

17. 3. Mrs. Hannah More (174.5-1833) was another famous 
person whom Macaulay knew well as a boy. It was at her house 
that his father and mother first met. As a boy he spent many 
weeks in her home. She gave him the money to buy his first 
books. Read Trevelyan, " Life of Macaulay," chapter I. 
She was a firm supporter of Wilberforce, and was well known 



NOTES 85 

as a religious writer. She never married; the title Mrs. was 
formerly applied to both married and unmarried women, 

18. 20. Boswell's " Life of Johnson " by universal consent 
merits the high praise Macaulay gives it in this paragraph. 
James Boswell (1740-1795) spent a great deal of his leisure 
from 1763, when he secured an introduction to Dr. Johnson, 
down to 1784, when Dr. Johnson died, in taking notes on his 
conversation and gathering facts about him. The " Life " 
consequently presents a picture unrivalled for the faithfulness 
and the vividness with which it reveals an absorbing per- 
sonality. 

18. 23. a blot in the escutcheon: Macaulay has elsewhere 
expressed more directly his feelings that Boswell's constant 
following of Dr. Johnson for the purpose of taking notes and 
recording his peculiarities was disgraceful. Read his " Essay 
on Boswell's Johnson," and also his '' Life of Johnson." Carlyle 
took a quite different view. In his " Essay on Boswell's 
Johnson," which was a veiled reply to Macaulay, he main- 
tained that Boswell's discipleship shows a recognition of great- 
ness which is admirable. 

18. 36. Camden's " Britannia " was first published in Latin 
in 1586 and grew in successive editions. It was translated into 
English in 1610. It is a very valuable book because of its full 
description of Great Britain at the time and of its rich stores 
of antiquarian knowledge. Macaulay as an historian would 
especially prize it. 

19. 15. John Wesley (1703-1791) was the founder of the So- 
ciety of Methodists, which in 1837 numbered 318,716 members 
in Great Britain and Ireland. He preached chiefly in the open 
air to the lower classes. He traveled five thousand miles a year 
and preached fifteen sermons a week. This he kept up for 
fifty years. His hymns were first published in 1737. His 
journals were published in parts from 1739 to 1791. They 
have been called " the most amazing record of human exertion 
ever penned by man." His works, when collected in 1771- 
1774, filled thirty-two volumes. How would Talfourd's pro- 
posed law have applied to these works? 

21. 2. piratical booksellers: Why are they called piratical? 

22. 1. divide the House: Why is the voting called dividing 
the house? See p. xvii. 



86 NOTES 

22. 6. Be read a second time: See p. xv. The house would 
probably not be in session six months later. Was Macaulay's 
motion carried? See p. xvii. 

The Second Speech on Copyright 

23. 5. My noble friend: Philip Henry, Fifth Earl of Stan- 
hope (1805-1875) was by courtesy styled Viscount Mahon 
or Lord Mahon from 1816 till his succession to the peerage in 
1855. Macaulay had reviewed his " History of the War of 
the Succession in Spain " in " The Edinburgh Review " for 
January, 1833. When Serjeant Talfourd lost his seat in 1841, 
he took up with energy the scheme for amending the copyright. 
See pp. 66-69 for a brief of the speech to which Macaulay is 
replying. 

26. 9. Madame D'Arblay (1752-1840) was one of the first 
of England's women novelists. Her first novel, " Evelina," 
appeared in 1778, yet she died only two years before Macaulay's 
speech. His " Essay on Madame D'Arblay " appeared in 
" The Edinburgh Review " for the year after the speech (Jan- 
uary, 1843). 

26. 9. Miss Austen: Jane Austen (1775-1817) was a greater 
novelist than Madame D'Arblay. Macaulay thought her a 
" wonderful woman." His nephew tells us that " ' Pride and 
Prejudice ' and the five sister novels, remained without a rival 
in his affections." What are the five sister novels? 

27. 13. Shakespeare: How does Macaulay's use of Shakes- 
peare to support his argument in this speech differ from the use 
in his first speech? /' Love's Labor 's Lost " was published 
in 1598, " Pericles, Prince of Tyre " in 1609, " Othello " in 
1622, '' Macbeth " in 1623. When did Shakespeare die? 
When would the copyright on each have expired according to 
Lord Mahon's and according to Macaulay's law? 

27. 17. Milton: How does this paragraph differ from Mac- 
aulay's use of Milton in his first speech? 

27. 27. Dryden (1632-1700) was for the last twenty-five 
years of his Ufe recognized as the leading man of letters in 
England. '' Alexander's Feast " was written in 1797. The 
four other poems grouped with it appeared in " Fables," 1700. 
\ 27. 32. Flecknoe, an Irish writer who died about 1678, was 



NOTES 87 

a harmless and sometimes agreeable writer of verse whom 
Dry den employed in his brilliant satire " MacFlecknoe " for 
an attack on his enemy Shad well. 

27. 32. Settle (1648-1723), who had some reputation at the 
time, aroused the enmity of Dryden and was treated with 
haughty satirical contempt as Doeg in the " Second Part of 
Absalom and Achitophel," 1682. Macaulay's estimate of 
these two obscure writers is partly due to Dryden's satire. 

28. 2. "Pastorals": Pope said he composed the poems 
when he was sixteen. They gave " manifest proof of his knowl- 
edge of books " but almost no evidence of a study of nature 
with his own eyes. 

28. 14. Fielding: All his novels were published in the last 
twelve years of his life. 

28. 26. Burke (1729-1797) should be known by every Ameri- 
can youth as one of the greatest English orators for his states- 
manlike policy for the American colonies. Read Augustine 
Birrell's entertaining life in " Obiter Dicta." 

29. 8. Sophocles (495-406 b.c.) is considered the greatest 
tragic poet. His " Qildipus at Colonos " was not played until 
four years after his death. 

29. 12. Demosthenes (384-322 b.c.) was the greatest of 
Greek orators. His Speech against the Guardians was delivered 
at eighteen in a suit to secure the return of more than $15,000 
which his guardians had dissipated. His Speech for the Crown, 
" the most finished, the most splendid and the most pathetic 
work of ancient eloquence," was delivered when he was fifty- 
four. Read Plutarch's life of this great statesman. 

29. 20. Cicero (106-43 b.c.) was the greatest of Roman 
orators and second only to Demosthenes in the ancient world. 
His first speech defending Roscius was a bold undertaking. 
His philippics against Marc Antony were the direct cause of 
his assassination. Read Plutarch's Ufe. 

29. 23. Racine (1639-1699) was the greatest of the French 
tragic poets. His first play to be produced (" Les Freres 
Ennemis ") was presented by Moliere in 1664. His finest 
and greatest tragedy, " AthaHe " was first played (1691) at a 
girl's school at St. Cyr. ^ 

29. 24. Moliere was the stage name of Jean Baptiste Poquelin 
(1622-1673), the greatest of French writers of comedy. 



88 NOTES 

" L'Etourdi " (" The Blunderer ") was first played in 1653 at 
Lyons. " Tartuffe " was, after a three years' struggle to over- 
come hostility, produced in 1667 at Paris. 

29. 26. Cervantes, Saavedra Miguel de (1547-1616), is the 
greatest of Spanish writers. The two parts of " Don Quixote " 
appeared in 1605 and 1615. Of this book Macaulay said, 
"It is certainly the best novel in the world beyond all com- 
parison." 

29. 29. Schiller, JohannChristophFriedrich von'(1759-1805), 
is the greatest of German dramatists. He began " The Rob- 
bers " when he was only nineteen in a miUtary school. What 
are his great plays? 

29. 30. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (1749-1832), is the 
greatest name in German literature. He and Schiller were 
intimate friends. " The Sorrows of Werther " is a very roman- 
tic and indeed sentimental novel published in 1774. What are 
his chief works? These later productions are probably the best 
proof of Macaulay's contention in this section of the speech. 
What is this contention? 

29. 31. the Committee: What committee has Macaulay 
been addressing? 

30. 23. no work of the imagination: Like all sweeping state- 
ments, this assertion is subject to exceptions. How old was 
Coleridge when he wrote " The Rime of the Ancient Mariner "? 

31. 33. Bacon, Francis (1561-1626), one of the most con- 
spicuous men of Shakespeare's time, is famous now chiefly as 
a writer. Macaulay wrote so long an essay on him that the 
editor of " The Edinburgh Review " wanted to cut it down, 
but it was so brilliantly written that he was afraid to. It 
appeared in July, 1837. 

31. 36. Hume, David (1711-1776), wrote a " History of 
England" (pubhshed 1754-1761) beginning with the invasion 
of Julius Csesar (55 B.C.) and extending to the Revolution of 
1688. Up to the appearance of Macaulay's history it was 
the most widely read historical work in England. On March 
8, 1849, Macaulay wrote to his friend Ellis: " At last I have 
attained true glory. As I walked through Fleet Street the 
day before yesterday, I saw a copy of Hume at a bookseller's 
window with the following label: ' Only 21. 2s. Hume's " His- 
tory of England," in eight volumes, highly valuable as an 



1 



NOTES 89 

introduction to Macaulay.' I laughed so convulsively that the 
other people who were staring at the books took me for a poor 
demented gentleman. Alas for poor David! " 

32. 1. Addison, Joseph (1672-1719), wrote most of the Sir 
Roger de Coverley Papers that appeared in the " Spectator." 
Read Macaulay's " Essay on Addison " and the last half of 
Thackeray's lecture on " Congreve and Addison " in " Enghsh 
Humorists." 

Lincoln's Address at Cooper Union 

35. 1. Mr. President: William Cullen Bryant presided at 
the meeting. 

35. 8. his speech last autumn at Columbus: See p. xxxviii. 

36. 5. ''The Constitution of the United States": Does the 
Constitution to-day consist of the parts enumerated by Lincoln? 

36. 12. the " thirty-nine ": If you are interested in the con- 
stitutional convention, read Fiske's " Critical Period of American 
History." 

36. 26. It is this: For the connection in which Douglas used 
the text, study the excerpt from his speech, pp. 78-79, and the 
brief, p. 75-78. Does Lincoln state Douglas's position fairly? 
A few days after the speech, Lincoln told Rev. A. P. Gulliver 
on a train in New England: '' I am never satisfied to leave 
a question until I have bounded it north and bounded it south 
and bounded it east and bounded it west." 

37. 3. In 1784: What use does Douglas make of this action? 
See p. 76. 

37. 4. the Northwestern Territory: If you do not under- 
stand this reference or the term Confederation, read over this 
period in your United States history. 

37. 33. the Ordinance of '87: Read the history of this '' really 
sovereign and greatly important act " to organize a govern- 
ment for this region. What reference to this ordinance does 
Douglas make? See p. 77. 

38. 12. without ayes and nays: That is, there was no roll 
call. When the Ordinance of '87 was passed, Judge Yates of 
New York required the ayes and nays, when it appeared that 
his w^as the only vote in the negative. Lincoln is therefore 
quite right in regarding the vote of 1789 as unanimous. 



90 'NOTES 

40. 26. the Missouri question: There is a reference to this 
matter in the Introduction, p. xxxiii, but you should read a full 
account m a United States history. 

41. 2. by his votes: Pinckney on June 8, 1787, had declared 
the necessity of one supreme controlling power, for he con- 
sidered this the cornerstone of the government. He was, more- 
over, a member of the committee which reported the Ordinance 
of '87, and on every occasion when it was under the considera- 
tion of Congress voted against all amendments. Lincoln is 
scrupulously fair in his description of Pinckney's action. 

41. 8. which I have been able to discover: Read p. 73 : 20 for 
the opinion of the first editors on the thoroughness of Lincoln's 
search. 

41. 23. corporal oaths: are oaths confirmed by touching a 
sacred object, especially the New Testament, as distinguished 
from merely spoken or written oaths. 

42. 10. grounds of expediency: Compare with Macaulay, 
pp. 3-6. 

42. 26. there is much reason to believe : Does Lincoln indi- 
cate where you might look for the evidence on this point? 

44. 3. the Dred Scott case: See the Introduction for a 
reference to this weighty decision, but you should also read 
carefully your United States history on this point. 

47. 24. "Black Republicans": In the Lincoln-Douglas 
debates Douglas used the phrase often to stir up the race pre- 
judice of his audience by implying that Lincoln was a radical 
abolitionist. In the Ottawa debate he declared that Lincoln 
and Trumbull had arranged in 1854 to form " an Abolition 
party, under the name and disguise of a Republican party." 

48. 11. we shall get votes in your section: The only South- 
ern states which cast votes for Lincoln in 1860 were: Delaware, 
3815; Maryland, 2294; Virginia, 1929; Missouri, 17,028; 
Kentucky, 1364. 

49. 3. Farewell Address: You will find this famous message 
in Longmans English Classics. A warning against sectional 
parties occurs on p. 83. ''In contemplating the causes which 
may disturb our union, it occurs as a matter of serious concern 
that any ground should have been furnished for characterizing 
parties by geographical discriminations — Northern and South- 
ern, Atlantic and Western." 



NOTES 91 

49. 10. he wrote Lafayette: The paragraph runs as follows: 
*' I agree with you cordially in your views in regard to negro 
slavery. I have long considered it a serious evil, both socially 
and politically, and I should rejoice in any feasible scheme to 
rid our States of such a burden. The Congress of 1787 adopted 
an ordinance which prohibits the existence of involuntary ser- 
vitude in our Northwestern Territory forever. I consider it 
a wise measure. It meets with the approval and assent of nearly 
every member from the States more immediately interested 
in slave labor. The prevailing opinion in Virginia is against the 
spread of slavery in our new Territories, and I trust we shall 
have a confederation of free States." 

50. 8. " Popular Sovereignty " was defined in less concrete 
terms by Douglas: "My principle is to recognize each State 
of the union as independent, sovereign, and equal in its sover- 
eignty." See Introduction, p. xxxiv, and Douglas's speech, 
pp. 78-79. 

50. 32. Harper's Ferry John Brown!! is an allusion to the 
famous attempt of John Brown to start an uprising of the 
negroes by seizing the United States arsenal at Harper's Ferry, 
Virginia, on October 16, 1859. The next day Robert E. Lee 
captured him and his army of twenty men. 

50. 34. you have failed to implicate a single Republican: 
Of the Congressional committee of five, the three Democrats 
reported: " It was simply the act of lawless ruffians, under 
the sanction of no public or political authority — distinguishable 
only from ordinary felonies by the ulterior ends in contem- 
plation by them." 

51. 3. you are inexcusable to assert it: From his seat in the 
Senate on January 16, 1860, Douglas stated his " firm and delib- 
erate conviction " that the Harper's Ferry crime was "the natural, 
logical, inevitable result of the doctrines and teachings of the 
Republican party, as explained and enforced in their platforms, 
their partisan presses, their pamphlets and books, and especilaly 
in the speeches of their leaders in and out of Congress." 

52. 8. the Southampton insurrection in August, 1831, was 
organized in Southampton county, Virginia, by a remarkable 
slave styling himself General Nat Turner. It resulted in the 
death of sixty-four whites, most of them women and children, 
and more than a thousand slaves. 



92 NOTES 

52. 28. the slave revolution in Hayti, extending from 1791 
to 1802, was peculiar in that negroes were instigated by the 
opjDosing factions of the whites. Toussaint L'Ouverture, a 
full-blooded negro, led the half million slaves first against the 
English and Spanish and later against the French forces. His 
character has been variously estimated; he is eulogized in Words- 
worth's sonnet and in one of Wendell Phillips's most eloquent 
lectures. 

52. 30. The gunpowder plot was a conspiracy among some 
Catholics in England to blow up both King James I and Par- 
liament, when it assembled on November 5, 1605. A Catholic 
peer. Lord Monteagle, who was by his brother-in-law Tresham 
warned not to appear, revealed the danger. Guy Fawkes 
was found in the cellars beneath Parliament House with thirty- 
six barrels of gunpowder, matches, and a dark lantern. 

53. 7. In the language of Mr. Jefferson: These words appear 
in Jefferson's first draft of the Declaration of Independence, 
in protest against the annulment of Virginia's slavery legisla- 
tion. See the brief for Douglas's speech, p. 76. Read Fiske's 
'' Critical Period." 

53. 11. pari passu: Jefferson meant by this Latin phrase 
that as fast as negroes should be set free or deported, free 
white laborers should take their places. 

53. 36. Orsini's attempt on Louis Napoleon was recent 
history. On January 14, 1858, he had tried to assassinate 
Napoleon III by a bomb. He made London his headquarters. 
Because an English jury acquitted him, France was disposed 
to condemn Great Britain for negligence. 

54. 7. Helper's Book was " The Impending Crisis of the 
South," published in 1857. He was a poor white of North 
Carolina who sought to show that slavery was ruinous on 
economic grounds to the South and to the future of the poor 
white and his children. A Southerner declared that any one 
who lent his name and influence to the propagation of such 
writings was not fit to live. About one hundred and fifty 
thousand were in circulation before 1861. The Republicans 
spread it broadcast as a campaign document. What other book 
had a great influence on the settlement of the slavery question? 

54. 12. a million and a half votes: In the election of 1856 
the Republicans cast 1,341,264 votes. 



NOTES 93 

55. 9. the Supreme Court has decided! Observe Lincoln's 
analysis of the Dred Scott decision. 

56. 17. To show all this: See the "Madison Papers" con- 
taining the journal of the constitutional convention. Madison 
himself thought it wrong to admit into the Constitution the 
idea that there could be property in men. 

58. 18. Senator Douglas's new sedition law: a reference to 
a resolution introduced into the Senate on January 16, 1860: 
" that the Committee on the Judiciary be instructed to report 
a bill for the protection of each State and Territory of the 
Union against invasion by the authorities or inhabitants of any 
other State or Territory; and for the suppression and punish- 
ment of conspiracies or combinations in any State or Terri- 
tory with intent to invade, assail, or molest the government, 
inhabitants, property, or institutions of any State or Territory 
of the Union." 

60. 9. a policy of " don't care " is a reference to a speech by 
Douglas in the Senate in 1857 in which he declared that he 
did not care whether slavery was voted up or voted down, 

60. 13. invocations to Washington: Where in this speech 
do we learn what Washington said and what he did? 



i 



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Edited by Bliss Perry, Professor of English Literature in 
Harvard University. $0.30. [For Reading.] 
Scott's Lady of the Lake. 

Edited by G. R. Carpenter. $0.25. [For Reading.] 
Scott's Marmion. 

Edited by Robert Morss Lovett, Professor of English in the 
University of Chicago. $0.30. [For Reading.] 
Scott's Quentin Durward. 

Edited by Mary E. Adams, Head of the Department of Eng- 
lish in the Central High School, Cleveland, O. $0.30. [For 
Reading.] 
Scott's Woodstock. 

Edited by Bliss Perry, Professor of English Literature in 
Harvard University, ^o 40. [For Reading.] 
Shakspere's A Midjummer Night's Dream. 

Edited by George Pierce Baker, Professor of English in Har- 
vard University. $0.25. [For Reading.] 
Shakspere's As You Like It. 

With an Introduction by Barrett Wendell, Professor of Eng- 
lish in Harvard University; and Notes by William Lyon Phelps, 
Lampson Professor of English Literature in Yale University. 
$0.25. [For Reading.] 
Shakspere's Hamlet. 

Edited by David T. Pottinger, Teacher of English, Thayer 
Academy, South Braintree, Mass. $0.25. [For Study or 
Reading.] 
Shakspere's Julius Caesar. 

Edited by George C. D. Odell, Professor of English in Co- 
lumbia University. $0.25. [For Study or Reading.] 
Shakspere's King Henry V. 

Edited by George C. D. Odell, Professor of English in Co- 
lumbia University. $0.25. [For Reading.] 
Shakspere's Macbeth. 

Edited by John Matthews Manly, Professor and Head of 
the Department of English in the University of Chicago. $0.25. 
[For Study or Reading.] 
Shakspere's The Merchant of Venice. 

Edited by Francis B. Gummere, Professor of English Literature 
in Haverford College. $0.25. [For Reading.] 
Shakspere's Twelfth Night. 

Edited by J. B. Henneman, late Professor of English, Uni- 
versity of the South. $0.25. [For Reading.] 
Southey's Life of Nelson. 
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Longmans^ English Classics 



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Edited by Clayton Hamilton, Extension Lecturer in Eng- 
lish, Columbia University. $0.25. [For Reading.] 
Tennyson's Qareth and Lynette, Launcelot and Elaine, Tha 
Passing of Arthur. 

Edited by Sophie C. Hart, Professor of Rhetoric in Wellesley 
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Tennyson's The Coming of Arthur, The Holy Grail and The 
Passing of Arthur. 

Edited by Sophie C. Hart. $0.23. [For Study.] 
Tennyson's The Princess. 

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The Sir Roger de Coverley Papers. 

Edited by D. O. S. Lowell, Head Master of the Roxbury Latin 
School, Boston, Mass. $0.25. [For Reading.] 
Thoreau's Waldcn. 

Edited by Raymond M. Alden, Professor of English, Uni- 
versity of Illinois. $0.30. [For Reading.] 
Washington's Farewell Address and Webster's First Bunker 
Hill Oration. 

Edited by Fred Newton Scott, Professor of Rhetoric in the 
University of Michigan. $0.25. [For Study.] 



Carlyle's Heroes, Hero=Worship, and the Heroic in History. 

Edited by Henry David Gray, Assistant Professor of English, 
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De Quincey's Flight of a Tartar Tribe. 

Edited by Charles Sears Baldwin, Professor of Rhetoric in 
Columbia University. $0.40. 
De Quincey's Joan of Arc and The English Mail Coach. 

Edited by Charles Sears Baldwin. $0.25. 
Dryden's Palamon and Arcite. 

Edited by William Tenney Brewster, Professor of English in 
Columbia University. $0.40. 
Irving's Tales of a Traveller. 

With an Introduction by Brander Matthews and Explanatory 
Notes by George R. Carpenter. $0.40. 
Milton's Paradise Lost. Books I. and II. 

Edited by Edward Everett Hale, Jr., Professor of the English 
Language and Literature in Union College. $0.40. 
Pope's Homer's Iliad. Books I., VI., XXII. and XXIV. 
Edited by William H. Maxwell, Superintendent of New York 
City Schools, and Percival Chubb, formerly Director of EngHsh, 
Ethical Culture School, New York. $0.40. 
Spenser's The Faerie Queene. (Selections.) 

Edited by John Erskine, Professor of English in Columbia 
University. $0.25. 



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